The Notre Dame Fighting Irish (1-0, #5/#7/#8) will take on the Richmond Spiders (2-1) Saturday at Arlotta Stadium, WatchESPN.   Gametime has been moved to noon, and it is expected to be cold and raining.

The Opposition

Richmond is playing in only their 5th season at the Division I level, and play in the SoCon.  While they are a relatively new team, they have established themselves as a top defensive unit and have made appearances in the NCAA tournament.  The season was supposed to introduce a more offensive-minded unit, but they have excelled statistically in the defensive categories as has been their tradition.  They are an excellent riding team, they have a good man-down defense, and they cause a lot of turnovers and maintain a large advantage in ground balls.  Defense remains their strength.

The Spiders opened the season ranked and are now hovering in the “also receiving votes” category.  This will be the first meeting between these teams.

What to expect

The Irish were plagued with turnovers in their season opener against Detroit.  The cold, rainy weather, and Richmond’s defense, will make it challenging to improve ball handling.  In addition to taking care of the ball, we will be looking for the following this game:

  1. Game 2 of the Matthew Schmidt experience:  Coach Corrigan indicated the freshman will start again, with Molloy in reserve.  Notre Dame is showing great trust in this new goalkeeper, and as long as he plays as well as he did against Detroit, all will be fine.
  2. Injuries:  The Irish are surprisingly banged up so early in the season.  We will be paying careful attention if all-Americans Sexton and Schantz see the field, along with face-off man Hyland (who appeared to twist his ankle against Detroit).
  3. The Attack:  The combination of Wynne/Garnsey/Willets/Morin had a tougher than expected time against Detroit.  An improvement in ball control within this unit is expected.

 

The Fighting Irish are clearly the favorites (-5.5, 18.5 o/u for those into this sort of thing), but the weather will likely make this a closer contest than anticipated, with Notre Dame needing to play much more cleanly than they did against Detroit.

 

#GoIrish