The Premier Lacrosse League completed its second week with a fantastic weekend of lacrosse at American Legion Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our Notre Dame lacrosse alumni were again dominant.

It is shaping up to be an Irish summer!

In a league full of offensive superstars, including Notre Dame’s Ryder Garnsey, Pat Kavanagh, Chris Kavanagh and Jake Taylor, it is the Irish defensemen that have officially become the apex predators of the league. While this may come as no surprise to fans of the Fighting Irish college team for whom defensive dominance is what we’ve come to expect, it’s nearly unheard of in a league designed to showcase offensive flash.

The Clutch

We’ll begin with the bagpiper. Recent Irish teams are no strangers to pressure. And who else to show that than two time national champion and former captain, Ben Ramsey. With the game on the line and his Boston Cannons down by one with a minute left in the game, he not only got the turnover to give his team the chance to tie the game, but took it coast to coast and did it himself. 

We truly can’t give enough praise to Ramsey, he is always the grittiest guy on the field. In a league with dominant FOGOs and LSMs, this rookie in only his second professional game is pushing the top 15 in ground balls, and is coming off a week when he had three caused turnovers as an SSDM! Ramsey is truly a one of one player. He has become a defensive game changer for the Boston Cannons.

The Hammer(s) of the League

We can’t say enough how dominant the Irish are on close defense. 

Of the defenseman with the most caused turnovers, 3 of the top 4 are former Irish. Those being #1 Arden Cohen with 7, #3 Jack Kielty with 5, and #4 Garrett Epple with 4 (Epple also being the active all-time leader by a huge margin).

As the stats confirm, the Redwoods’ Cohen has been a monster. His slap checks are so loud that they are scary to fans in the stands, and we can’t even imagine what it feels like to be the attackman he is guarding. The timing and violence of his slides and double-teams is without comparison at the moment. He’s always been good, but these first two weeks have been next level, including this weekend’s ridiculous five caused turnover performance.

Arden takes after another player on that list, Garrett Epple. Both of them go so hard to the double that the other defender can just fall back and recover. Cohen and Epple hit them so hard that having the second player there isn’t adding to the experience. This observation that players will willingly give up a double because the slide arrives with such violence unheard of and shows just how crazy our Notre Dame defensemen are.

Writers across the league comment on how PLL scoring is down this summer. We suggest we have a good idea of the reason why.

Spinjitzu

You can’t talk about PLL offense without mentioning the Sensei Wu and Lloyd duo that is Ryder Garnsey and his protege CKav.

After a bit of a slow start for their California Redwoods Saturday night, the energy quickly changed as is Ryder and Chris competed to see who could have the most insane play of the night. The whole thing was crazy to watch, but we can say there was a definite winner in that “battle”.

In the sensei like way, Garnsey started the craziness with two plays that were just plain silly. It began with a one-handed skip pass through the heart of the defense while being double-teamed. Ryder placed it precisely on Dylan Molloy’s stick who took a quick side-step and sniped in the goal.

Because that level of audaciousness is never enough for Ryder, he followed it with a true spinjitzu goal, spinning around on the crease after picking up a rebounded shot. He was doing it all.

 

After letting Ryder have his fun, CKav decided to show his sensei how it is truly done. After getting stuffed on the crease a few times off some amazing dodges, CKav hit one of the craziest shots ever. Words cannot do this play justice, so just take a look at the SportsCenter #1 play of the week for yourself:

We must make this entirely clear: rookies in professional lacrosse across all formats do not do this. The audacity to even consider a between the legs shot on a hall of fame and multiple time league MVP goalie is just insane.

Just two weeks into the season, this duo has racked up 14 points. Combine that with Molloy’s 9 and McAdorey’s 8 and this team has a recipe to go far this year.

The Quarterback

In other clutch news from the Irish, we can’t forget to mention Jake Taylor. While he did get to showcase the behind-the-back shot that made him famous, he is quickly defining himself as one of the most valuable off-ball players in the league. We dare say Jake Taylor had an effect on almost every Waterdogs goal. 

The headlines in the Waterdogs win highlight the seven assist performance by the stellar Michael Sowers. But Sowers himself identified the rookie Taylor as the true quarterback of the offense. He is an artist at work, subtly directing traffic while disrupting the defensive organization with precise moves. Why did Sowers have so many open players to pass to? Because Taylor created time for his teammates to move.

Taylor continuously sealed off one, if not two, defensemen on the inside, which allowed for Sowers to get into his element and rack up those seven assists. With Taylor disrupting the second- and third-slide help, Waterdog attackmen ran free through the Whipsnake defense. Our favorite moment from that game was when the defense was so fed up with Taylor that mid play not one, but two defenders turned away from the play to point Taylor out in frustration, leaving a wide open player to score. He was so far in their heads he was making plays by just standing there!

Here is where we would normally shout out Entenmann, but this week he had the week off. In other goalie news, while he didn’t attend Notre Dame we would like to give a big congratulations to Blaze Riorden from setting the single game save record on Friday against the Outlaws. While that record is very impressive, we think we have an idea as to who will break it in the future ;).

 

Next week, the PLL goes to Philadelphia. The match-ups this weekend are Waterdogs vs Cannons, Redwoods vs Archers, Atlas vs Whipsnakes, and Outlaws vs Waterdogs. As always, we expect a lot from the former Irish this weekend!

#GoIrish

ND-ATL 2.0