The #4/#4 ranked Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team will be opening their season this Saturday at The Star in Frisco against Georgetown (2:00 pm EST, ESPNU).   Once again, the Fighting Irish will open the season in style with a neutral site game at what is probably the premiere pro sports training facility.

The Irish opened their 2016 against the Hoyas as well, throttling them in Kennesaw, Georgia, 12-7.  The Hoya’s season went right down the toilet after that game, but it is important to remember they were ranked #14 at the time and considered a program on the rise, even if they opened the season this past Tuesday getting whacked by High Point 9-3.

The 2016 contest was noteworthy for several reason.  It confirmed Sergio Perkovic as the premiere outside shooting threat in the country with the 4 absolute bombs he delivered, and it reminded us that Mikey Wynne is a bona fide closer at the crease with his 4 goals from point-blank range.  More importantly, the game disclosed John Sexton and Hugh Crance as two-way threats from LSM, and it was the first time we saw the patented lefty low-to-high slingshot from then-freshman Ryder Garnsey that would become a mainstay later in the season.

 

 

What we need to see Saturday:

-Notre Dame has to set the tone for the season with a strong performance against the Hoyas.  Their 2017 schedule is as difficult as any every produced in college lacrosse, and with only 11 regular season games, it leaves the Irish no margin for error if they hope to make a national championship run.

–Who will lead the defense?  The lacrosse world has come to assume that a Gerry Byrne coached defense will be among the best in the country.  However, this year’s version will be without Matt Landis, perhaps the greatest defenseman Notre Dame ever had, and Ed Glazener, probably the best defensive communicator in the country last year.  These holes will be filled by a combination of preseason all-american Garrett Epple, Hugh Crance (moving close from LSM), Pat Healy  and freshman Jack Kielty.  This is an entirely new look for the close defense, but they are surrounded by co-captain Shane Doss in goal, and an embarrassment of riches at the defensive midfield including John Sexton, Drew Schantz and co-captain Nick Koshansky.  On paper this bunch should be excellent, but they are an entirely new arrangement.

–The 6-on-6 offense must improve.  Notre Dame scores well in transition, and this year should be no exception.  However, the 2016 even-strength offense was underachieving to be polite, and this year’s bunch will be without Matt Kavanagh, who had just about every assist on that offense.  The key will be finding new ways to generate assists instead of just relying on dodging and possession shots from Perkovic up high.  How this will be done is the great open question for the season.  Notre Dame likes to run three lines of midfielders, so a lot of guys will get their chance (including touted freshman Brian Willets and Bryan Costabile), and Garnsey has taken on Kavanagh’s #50, hopefully showing he wants to embrace the King of Clutch’s role.  There was what we hope is a foreshadowing of an improved set offense in the scrimmage against Team USA.  Instead of forcing a shot when he got closed out by a double-team, Perkovic dumped the ball to Garnsey behind GLE, who then fired an assist to Wynne on the crease:

 

This execution, against the top pros in the world, was nearly flawless.  Perkovic draws the double, dumps to Garnsey, who immediately forced a second slide, while Wynne found the perfect shooting area the microsecond his defender slid.  In 2016, Perkovic would have forced the shot or Kavanagh/Garnsey would have tried to force a shot off their dodge.  The ball would not have moved this poetically. Since Perkovic is likely to get the kitchen sink thrown at him to keep him from getting his hands free, his willingness to outlet to the attack after drawing a double will be a welcome new facet to the game.

–Faceoff/wing play/transition–  We throw a bunch of topics into this grab-bag of issues to reflect the transition developments we saw in Lars Tiffany’s Brown team last year and the hope that ND will incorporate a few of them.  The Irish are already a good transition team, but to what degree will Coaches Corrigan and Karweck use the poles, D-middies and faceoff wings in a more direct scoring role?  The Georgetown game is the right place to bring this up because we first saw potential with goals by Sexton and Crance, and an assist by Epple in the 2016 tilt.  Plus, we saw a lot of double-poling the wings on faceoff during the Team USA game, along with a lot of new, young faces in those roles.  One hopes the coaching staff recognizes the depth of talent Notre Dame has for this sort of system.  Sexton, Crance, Schantz, Gaiss, etc. have all shown a scoring aptitude.  Of course, we don’t expect the Irish to adopt this system with its indiscriminate shooting full-on, but some adaptation to take advantage of talent depth would be welcome.  Thrown in with this issue will be the question of who emerges as the central faceoff specialist: Finley, Travisano or the freshman Hyland.

As with any new season, there are certainly many other issues and needs for affirmation that could be discussed. but if we can get some clarity on these four areas, we will have a much better understanding of how good this team is.  While we are notable Notre Dame homers, looking at this as objectively as we can, there is every reason in the world to like this roster, team and prospects for the 2017 campaign for a national championship.

#GoIrish

*A non-game related note, we are often asked how Notre Dame chooses neutral sites for these games.  In truth, we do not know. However, given this recent tweet by coach Byrne, and the fact that Notre Dame was spied near our local Pappasitos during their game in Atlanta last year, perhaps access to a good margarita and some chicken fajitas may be a deciding factor. Hmmm…

 

 

** For those interested in this sort of thing: