Our #1 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (6-1, 1-0 ACC) sent the visiting #4 Syracuse Orangemen (9-3, 1-1 ACC) home with a 14-12 loss.

5000 fans filled Arlotta to watch the #1 men’s and now #1 women’s teams play!

The Plot

We apologize that this week’s recap is shorter than the game deserves. We update you from our mobile 18 Stripes office on a train in the English countryside.

The Orange struck first about a minute and a half into the game, but Riley Gray responded with 2 to give the Irish the early lead. Ben Ramsey added a third before Syracuse struck back twice to tie the game.

However, Will Lynch was dominant at the X, and the Irish surged ahead to end the quarter up 6-3, and the half 10-5. The Irish methodically increased the gap to 13-7 to end the third.

Syracuse showed spark in the 4th quarter consistent with their #3 ranking entering the game. They closed the gap to 13-10 before a Dobson goal slowed their momentum. The Orange regrouped and brought the score to an uncomfortable 14-12 late in the game. But for a Liam Entenmann save of the year, the Irish fans would have had reason to be nervous.

A few Syracuse penalties near the end effectively stopped the comeback as the Irish ran out the clock man-up and victorious at 14-12.

The Scoring

PKav and Dobson led scorers with 2 goals and an assist each.

The Irish depth was on display as 9 players logged goals.

However, the key stat if the day was the brilliant 20 of 29 at faceoff, led by Will Lynch’s awesome 19 of 26.

Our Pregame 3 Questions

The pregame questions were all answered well by the Irish.

  1. Faceoff parity: The unit did  a lot more than achieve the necessary parity! Behind Will Lynch’s great effort, the unit kept Syracuse at arm’s length until the very end. Bravo!
  2. Syracuse aggression: The Irish handled the highly-regarded Syracuse defense very well until the Orange comeback in the fourth when things got sketchy. Fortunately, the boys were working with a comfortable lead. And as noted in our preview, their aggression works until it doesn’t. Late Orange penalties closed out their comeback effort.
  3. Defensive discipline: 3.5 quarters of tough defense and some Entenmann heroics during the last .5 were plenty. Syracuse showed they had the talent to make it interesting, but in the battle of top 5 defenses the Irish had the more consistent effort.

It wasn’t perfect, but this was a very good Notre Dame effort. Syracuse came into the game with a ton of momentum and confidence, but the boys let them know it wasn’t going to be their day early and convincingly. Credit to the Orange for finding a way to make it close at the end. We can see how they dominated Duke. They will be a handful in the ACC and NCAA tournaments. We don’t envy their opponents.

Up next, the boys travel to #3 Duke (10-2, 0-1 ACC) for a Sunday, April 7 rematch of the NCAA final at noon (ACCN).

#GoIrish

ND-Atl 2.0