Our #1 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (11-1) thumped the #5 Virginia Cavaliers (10-5), by the score 18-9 in ACC Championship semi-final in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Liam Entenmann was honored by the team by being given the #40 to wear, and Liam honored the memory of Mike “Steel” Sennett with an 18-save masterpiece. He was extended an honor bestowed on Sergio Perkovic, Brendan Gleason, James Littlefield, Arden Cohen, Max Manyak, Jack Kielty and others.
With only a day for the Irish to recover before the ACC Championship final on Sunday against Duke, we’ll cut right to the chase.
How it happened
The boys jumped on the ‘Hoos immediately and were quickly up 4-0. Time of possession was lopsided with the Irish possessing the ball 75% of the first quarter. By the half it was 10-3 Notre Dame, with the Irish having an incredible 9 different goal scorers.
Notre Dame substituted fully in the third quarter and still managed to extend their lead to 14-4. Liam Entenmann and the defense suffocated the vaunted Virginia offense. The result was clearly in hand, and Notre Dame took the opportunity to get more players on the field and rest others for Sunday on their way to a 18-9 final score.
While the score was impressive, it is scary to say that the game was far from perfect. The boys will look to make improvements in the clear game and in avoiding turnovers by Sunday. It is amazing to think that there is still more potential to extract from this team.
The Scoring
Devon McLane led scorers with 4 goals on 6 shots. Will Angrick followed with 2 goals on 4 shots.
PKav, CKav and Faison were the distributors with a goal and 3 assists each. Walker and Busenkell had a goal and an assist.
Taylor, Dobson, Conlin (pole goal!), Lynch, Seymour and Donovan (another pole goal!) rounded out the goal scorers.
The faceoff unit was great, led by Will Lynch (10 of 18) and with great support from Colin Hagstrom (2 of 4) and Andrew Greenspan (6 of 8).
As noted above, Entenmann was magnificent with 18 saves against only 6 goals allowed. The defense was excellent across the board, but we’ll add special mention of Shawn Lyght for leading the effort that held Connor Shellenberger to just 2 assists. We’ll also note the good game played by Tyler Buchner and later Danny Parker in the absence of Christian Alacqua.
The man-up unit was again masterful, going 4 of 5.
Efficiency numbers were as lopsided as the score would suggest: 43.9% to 23.7%.
33 Irish players saw the field.
Thoughts
We went into this game noting that it was imperative that the Irish go deep into the roster early and consistently. They certainly did this. The second and third midfield lines saw the field early, and they validated the coaches’ trust with consistent scoring across both these lines. Getting a comfortable lead early also allowed the team to deploy extra attackmen and a lot of extra poles. This will be handy come Sunday and the NCAA tournament.
As mentioned above, it was a great performance but not a perfect one. The boys may hear a thing or two from the coaches regarding the care with which they handled the ball, and some lapses in discipline in the transition game. It didn’t hurt the team much, but the players will understand that giving Virginia extra chances to run was not part of the game plan. This team continues on its quest to constantly improve, and we are confident will see these issues cleaned up quickly.
Up next
Duke flipped the script on Syracuse and handled the Orange 18-13 in the other semi-final. The teams will meet on Sunday at noon (ACCN). The Irish will concern themselves in planning with the fact that O’Neill, McAdorey, Zawada and Williams are in great form and confident from scoring a ton against Syracuse.
We think the overall plan will remain the same. The Irish will stay disciplined on defense and will use their depth across the field to try to wear down Duke.
#GoIrish
ND-Atl 2.0
A still from my all-time favorite sad fan clip? Truly a blessed day!
I missed the game (hooray for having a sick toddler) so thanks for the write-up! Really feels like this team is hitting a higher gear at just the right time.
This was a fun weekend. Let’s keep playing like this!
Can we get one Faison goal this year with a Buchher assist?
The are trying everything they can to get Buchner on the scoresheet. He has not lacked for opportunities. We’re confident one will go in the net soon. He’s holding up very well physically at SSDM. He launched Zawada to the moon with what seemed a passive check at the time.
If the ACC gets seeded by RPI:
#1 Irish
#5 Hoos
#2 Blue Devils
#3 Orange
It sets up the same Memorial Day weekend matchups for the Irish as last year in Philly.
A potential quarterfinals match with the only team to beat us this year? Hell yeah.
Also excited to see Saint Joseph’s in the tourney (I started college at ND, but had to withdrawal for medical reasons and finished part-time at St. Joe’s). Go Hawks!
Yeah, Georgetown has two potentially irritated opponents to open the tournament. Penn State should have gotten to host a game by RPI.
The only real complaint (and it’s more an observation than a complaint) we have about the draw was that the #1 seed didn’t give us an improved path over what #2,3,4 got at the quarterfinal level. That’s not the committee’s fault, there isn’t much to differentiate seeds 5 through 8 plus Penn St. It’s also helpful that we would be slotted to play at Shuart for QF, more likely to be a home-ish crowd than Towson.
I’m curious how the Albany/Sacred Heart winner will look relative to what I’ll generously call an over-matched Utah team we opened the tournament against last year. Hopefully a walk-over.
I did think the committees had a bit of a laugh putting Georgetown in ND’s QF after watching the women’s selection show and having number 4 ND seeded number 7 in BC’s QF — BC being the only team the Irish Ladies really haven’t been able to solve the last few years (1-5 in 6 matchups over 3 years).