Our #9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (5-3) lost to the #4 Syracuse Orange this past Saturday. It was a tough loss and put the Irish under a lot of pressure to win the remaining key games to avoid putting the NCAA tournament in doubt. Questions about this team frustratingly linger.
The Plot
Matt Jeffery scored first a little over a minute into the game to give the Irish the opening goal, followed by two quick McLane goals to give the Irish an early 3-0 lead just 5 minutes into the game. With this hot start fans probably felt comfortable that the game looked to be a continuation of the long win streak over the Orangemen.
This is where things went very very wrong. Syracuse was determined to asset themselves physically, mostly at the expense of Jake Taylor. The referees were letting the team play and the Orange took full advantage of that. Notre Dame struggled to match their energy and was unable to punish Syracuse’s aggressiveness.
From here it was 39 minutes until the next Irish goal.
After the start of the scoring drought, the Orange scored 2 quick goals to end the quarter Irish up 3-2. The boys failed to convert a few good looks that would have certainly changed the tone of the game.
The second quarter was all ‘Cuse. They dominated the quarter 6-0 and went into the half up 8-3. Defensively, Notre Dame was unable to stop them at all. On top of that, Syracuse played a very physical brand of defense on the interior which shut down Taylor. Taylor had been an Orangemen killer the past few games, and it was clear the opponent was going to dare the Irish to find a way to win without him. With their go-to form of offense not working and the interior closed off by an aggressive Syracuse defense, the Notre Dame midfield needed to step up and make room for the interior. They were unable to do. Both of these combined caused lots of frustration for everyone, and accelerated the downward spiral.
Coming out of the half, both offenses started slow. The first goal of the quarter was scored with just 3 minutes left, and made the Cuse lead 9-3. The Irish were able to string together 2 quick goals to end the third which closed it to a more manageable number.
To start the fourth Ricciardelli traded a goal with the Orange, followed by a goal from CKav. At this point, the Orange went on one final 3 goal run to ice the game and put it out of reach. In the last few minutes, there were goals from Taylor and Busenkell interrupted by another Cuse goal, but it was far too little, far too late.
Without going into too much detail so as to not create the appearance of excuse-making, a Lynch goal was disallowed on a very questionable goal mouth call. Similarly, a later fast break goal was disallowed on a late offsides call (which was oddly not shown on replay). The calls were terrible, but the referees didn’t cause the loss.
The Scoring
CKav led the scoring with 2 goals and 2 assists, Taylor and Jeffery each had a goal and assist, McLane had 2 goals, Angrick had an assist, and Ricciardelli, Maheras, and Busenkell each had a goal.
Ricciardelli had a pretty good day in the cage all things considered, with 11 saves on the day putting him just below 50%
Stat wise, the Irish were back to a place we thought they had moved on from. They lost both the shot battle (43-33) and the ground ball battle (31-24). On top of that, they had 16 turnovers. While this was the came total as Syracuse, is still way too many, particularly in a game where they had a faceoff and ground ball deficit.. These are the simple things that separate a win from a loss. You don’t necessarily need to win all of those stat battles, but they need to at least be close. They weren’t this week. The boys have shown that when they want to they can win these battles, but we need that to be an every week thing.
Our friends at Lacrossereference.com calculated that the offense was 26% efficient, but Syracuse operated at an impressive 42%.
Another notable detail we noticed was the fact that Syracuse had 9 failed clears. Very few, if any, were leveraged by Notre Dame. The lethal ride was a big part of the last two seasons, and now that we had it back for a game we forgot how to capitalize off of it. Opportunities like that don’t come by every game, so when they do we need to use them more.
Our Questions
It didn’t occur to us that we could miss the mark in our pregame questions this much more than halfway into the season.
- Offensive Firepower: While there were glimpses of greatness in the early 3-goal run, this game is much better characterized by the frustration that the offense faced. The boys were plain and simply getting pushed around. The refs were certainly letting the teams play. Syracuse did exactly what teams should do to take advantage of latitude. Notre Dame did not. That level of frustration never works out.
- Building an ACC win streak: Unfortunately, as nice as it would have been to have a bit of a “safety-net”, with this loss every game moving forward is close to a must win. There are three regular season games left in the season, two of which are within the ACC. The boys are putting themselves in a situation where their tournament prospects are not in their control. They should take a moment to remember 2022 as motivation to perform better.
- Defensive control: In all honesty, the defense was lackluster. Slides were very late, and 2 slides were simply not there a lot of the time. That’s not to mention the fact that we were getting abused off the ball. It is very nerve racking to see us find a whole new set of problems to have, especially when many of these are problems are high school level communication issues that have no place on a college team. Of paricular note was Syracuse’s solution to Shawn Lyght’s prowess as an on-ball defender. They forced him into an off-ball role, and the defense really struggled to adapt. There aren’t many players like Joey Spallina who can easily pivot between on- and off-ball offensive roles, but the concern is that Syracuse created a road map to solve the Irish defense.
Dealing with frustration
While we can complain about all the little things that go wrong, in truth one little problem is rarely what separates a win from a loss. The separating factor is normally a combination of lots of little problems, not one big overarching problem. This accumulation of turnovers, inconsistent offensive play, lapses in defensive communication, etc. is clearly frustrating this Notre Dame team and its supporters.
To be clear, we aren’t talking about the type of frustration that comes from a single play that you can quickly move on from, but rather the type of accumulated frustration that just makes you angry because of its repetitive nature.
The boys were able to land the first punch with the opening 3 goals run, but like any good team Syracuse fought back. The Orange fixed their mistakes on defense and punched back. But instead of adjusting themselves, the Irish got frustrated and compounded this with the frustration of basic mistakes that should have been permanently corrected weeks ago. When the go-to method of interior play got shut down by physicality, the Irish froze and didn’t know how to react. That was one of the most frustrating things to watch because we know they have other ways to score and are good enough to execute them, but for some reason they didn’t and got stuck on plan A.
The reason this causes so much frustration is because, like we have been saying all season, we know they are better than this. We aren’t sure if they don’t believe they are as good as they are, or worse, they thought their aura was enough to walk through the season.
We have preached playing to their potential all season, and there isn’t much left to say about it. Now it’s just up to the boys to decide who they want to be. It’s honestly terrifying that we don’t know what kind of team this is with only three weeks left in the regular season, but it seems that that speaks to just how good the team can be. They still have the opportunity to prove themselves late in the season. No one doubts they can correct, which isn’t the case if you are not a good team.
Again, we are hard on the boys because we know how good they are when they are playing at their best.
Next week, ACC play continues against Virginia. Like we said before, this one is close to a must win and there is no way around it. Virginia has struggled and Notre Dame should expect their best effort. Whatever frustrations the Irish are facing, the Cavaliers are dealing with even moreso. The boys will be facing a cornered tiger. It definitely be another great one to watch! Saturday at 5:00 pm, ESPNU!
#GoIrish
ND-ATL 2.o
