The Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team, after a week of practices and sundry in sunny Florida, played the US National Lacrosse Team this past Saturday.   The Irish played very well against the best lacrosse players in the world and expectations for this squad are rising steadily.

With stalwarts Matt Landis, Matt Kavanagh and Ed Glazener graduated, it was clear that this season would see significant roster and stylistic changes.  To facilitate this transition, Coach Corrigan scheduled a much more intensive spring scrimmage season beginning with this game against the national team at IMG Academy in Brandenton.

Thirty Irish players saw the field to test themselves against the likes of Matt Danowski, Marcus Holman, Rob Pannell, and the rest of the assembled might of the defending world championship team.  The 16-11 final score had Notre Dame playing gamely throughout, especially in the second half where they outscored Team USA 7-6.  It bears note that in last year’s scrimmage, Team USA pounded then-defending NCAA champions Denver 22-6.

The game was live streamed (3.1k+ viewers) and had a healthy live attendance.  There were some viewing limitations in the stream, but we’ve compiled notes from them game:

Wynne (3g), Garnsey (2g, 4a) and Marini got the start at attack, with Perkovic (2g) starting at midfield with Brendon Gleason and Thomas McNamara (1a).  Notably, Perkovic lined up at attack with Marini coming out of the box.  The Wynne-Perkovic-Garnsey combo had good chemistry and regularly generated promising looks out of 6-on-6 settled situation, something very rare last season.  Pierre Byrne (1g),  Jordan Walter (1a), Austin Gaiss, Nick Koshansky, Ben Pridemore,  Brian Willetts, Tim Phillips, Bobby Gray, Brendan Collins and Robert Collins were all in the midfield rotation.

Garnsey was often relentless.  He is going to be very fun to watch.

On defense, preseason All-American Garrett Epple got the start along with Pat Healy (who had a few appearances last season) and sophomore Hugh Crance, who played with the USA U-19 Team at the world championships this summer.  Freshman Jack Kielty got significant time at close defense. John Sexton, William Young, freshman Eric Restic, and freshman Michael Farnish all saw significant action in long-pole roles.   The new look defense got off to a rough start, which should not come as a surprise given the extremely high quality of the opposition, and we commented on twitter early that communication seemed off.   However, they quickly got organized and frustrated the high-powered Team USA throughout the second half.   This unit looks very promising, especially Hugh Crance, who gobbled up 4 GBs.

It was good to see Owen Molloy get the start for some valuable experience, even though he struggled somewhat in having only 3 saves while given up 10 goals.  He faced a significant number of point-blank shots.  Shane Doss made 7 saves in the second half and looked fantastic.  Mike Marchese and John Zullo unfortunately did not get any time.

P.J. Finley and John Travasano again had faceoff duty, along with freshman Kyle Hyland.  It was a tough day at the office, but the unit had a new look using double poles on the wings almost exclusively.  One hopes this signals a much needed modernization of their faceoff approach.

The defensive midfield had some challenges, but with Drew Schantz scoring twice and John Sexton putting a buzzer-beater in the net, there is a lot of optimism that they will be a consistent, and much needed, scoring threat.  Three goals from the defensive midfield is a very healthy total.

Obviously, one week into the preseason this is not the finished product, but it is a very, very promising start.  After two years with few, if any, stylistic changes, it is fascinating to watch the coaching staff experiment with new looks.  At the end of the day, 11 goals against Team USA with very few unsettled opportunities is something is a great foundation.

Notes:

-The flowing locks of Mikey Wynne and Ryder Garnsey have left us.

-It was awesome to see Garnsey wearing Kavanagh’s #50 and Hugh Crance wearing Glazener’s #30.

-After being the target of twitter criticism suggesting he is a one-trick pony, we gave a hearty chuckle watching Perkovic open the ND scoring off the dodge, and doing it on top-notch defensive midfielder Josh Hawkins was a nice bonus.

So that we did not forget its awesome power, he also connected on a huge bomb in the fourth quarter.

-Poor ground ball technique was a serious problem.  The Irish did an excellent job on defense getting the ball on ground, but a terrible job picking it up.  GB total should have been much, much higher.  Early season jitters to not excuse this.  Every player on this roster has had proper ground ball technique drilled into them from the U11 level.  Simply picking up the ground balls that were there for the taking would have dramatically changed the flavor of the game a may have even put ND in a position to beat Team USA.

-A good bit of rust in the passing game led to a lot of self-inflicted turnovers.  It wasn’t quite as bad as last year as many of the errant passes on Saturday were at least creative skip passes and such.  It provides comfort that the errors at least came from an aggressive mindset and not simply dropping buddy passes.

-There were very few fast-break and unsettled opportunities for Notre Dame, so there’s not much to evaluate in this regard yet.  Likewise, there weren’t too many man-up situations, although in these few situations ball movement was good and Perkovic was getting some solid looks up high to wind up and bomb shots.

–YouTube link to rebroadcast.

-U.S. Lacrosse recap.

-Thanks to @LaxFilmRoom for tweeting videos of key plays during game.