Hockey
Starting Friday, Notre Dame hockey will begin the postseason where it finished the regular season — Ann Arbor. Two weeks after receiving a sweep from the Wolverines, the Irish will return to Yost Ice Arena and face Michigan in the Big Ten Quarterfinals. Notre Dame enters the best-of-three series as the fifth seed in the conference, having ended the regular season at 15-17-2 overall and 9-13-2 in league play.
Women’s Basketball
After an up-and-down February, Notre Dame women’s basketball has found its stride down the stretch. Back-to-back top-25 victories, including a convincing win over then-No. 5 Virginia Tech, have propelled the Irish into double-bye status in the ACC Tournament. Barring a second round upset from the winner of a first-round matchup between No. 12 Clemson and No. 13 Boston College, they will likely receive Louisville in the quarterfinal, a team they lost to earlier in the season.
Even more importantly, Notre Dame is now in a solid position to host its first two games of March Madness, an honor only bestowed on the top 16 teams in the field. The Irish should once again be a force to be reckoned with in the postseason, and it will be exciting to see how their sensational freshman guard Hannah Hidalgo handles her first March run.
Men’s Basketball
Notre Dame men’s basketball will round out their regular season with an away matchup against Virginia Tech on Saturday, Mar. 9. Next up will be the ACC Tournament, with play beginning on Mar. 12 in Washington D.C. The Irish will look to freshmen guards and scoring leaders, Markus Burton and Braeden Shrewsberry, to light up the court. It will be head coach Micah Shrewsberry’s first postseason with Notre Dame as he guides a young Irish squad looking to continue building momentum and make a name for themselves.
Men’s Lacrosse
Coming off an impressive bounce-back victory over a top-tier team in Maryland, the Irish enter a lighter portion of their schedule. The team only plays twice between now and Mar. 30, with both of their games coming against non-conference foes. First up is Ohio State on the road on Mar. 9 at noon. The Buckeyes started the year 4-0 but have dropped their last two contests to Virginia and Cornell, outscored by a combined margin of 29-19.
Following that, the Irish return home for their Irish Wear Green game against Michigan on Mar. 16 at 2 p.m. The Cavaliers also boast a win over the Wolverines, knocking them off 19-11 in Michigan’s season opener. Since then, the Wolverines are 5-0. They most recently beat No. 19 Delaware 13-8 and will face No. 10 Harvard on Mar. 10 before making the trip to South Bend.
Women’s Lacrosse
The Notre Dame women’s lacrosse season has gotten off to a historic start, and the No. 4 Irish will look to keep rolling as they gear up for three top-25 matchups during Spring Break.
In February, Notre Dame knocked off defending national champion No. 1 Northwestern at home, marking the first time in program history that the Irish have defeated the nation’s top-ranked team. And after suffering their first loss of the season at the hands of Syracuse, the Irish bounced back in a big way last Saturday, traveling to Chapel Hill and defeating North Carolina on the road for the first time ever. That win pushed the Irish’s record to an impressive 5-1 and gave them their first ACC victory of the year as they enter a three-game stretch that includes two crucial conference matchups this week.
On Saturday, Notre Dame will play host to No. 13 Virginia. The Irish and Cavaliers each currently sit at 1-1 in ACC play, and both teams will aim to move into the upper tier of the conference standings with a win. From there, the Irish will head to the northeast for the second half of the week to play a pair of road games.
Next Wednesday afternoon, they will face off with No. 25 Brown in a midweek non-conference duel. Three days later, they will travel to Massachusetts for one of the most anticipated matchups of the season: a rematch with rival No. 3 Boston College, who knocked the Irish out of both the ACC and NCAA Tournaments last season. Notre Dame has lost to the Eagles in each of the teams’ last seven meetings, and a talented Irish team will be highly motivated to snap that streak and continue to establish themselves as national title contenders this spring.
Tennis
The women’s tennis team dropped their last two matches, both against ACC rivals, No. 10 NC State and No. 35 Wake Forest. The No. 43 Irish team is 1-3 in conference play but they will look to turn this trend around with three matches before the end of Spring Break. First up is a match against Louisville this Sunday, who is currently last place in the ACC.
The men’s tennis team has also struggled so far this year. While they are currently 8-6 overall and No. 49 in the country, they have struggled against better teams throughout the season. Currently in a five way tie for 4th place in the ACC, the Irish will host No. 49 Northwestern before traveling to Virginia Tech and Virginia. The Irish recently hosted No. 17 Florida State, and while they lost, they showed strong competitiveness that will give them confidence against other top opponents.
Golf
On the men’s side, the Irish enter break feeling good after a strong third-place finish at The Invitational at the Ford. It will be a busy time for the team, though, with competitions on back-to-back weekends after having last weekend off. The Irish will compete in the Johnnie-O at Sea Island event, hosted by Rutgers, at Sea Island Sea Side Golf Club in St. Simons, Georgia, from March 11-12. A week later, they’ll return to Georgia, heading to Statesboro for the Shenkel Invitational, hosted by Georgia Southern. These will be the team’s third and fourth out of five spring regular season events, respectively.
The women’s team is in need of a bounceback, though. The Irish placed 10th in the Florida Gators Invitational, shooting a spring-worst 40-over par. For reference, the team shot 27 over par in its first two competitions of the semester combined. Their fourth of five spring tournaments will be the Tulane Classic, played at the English Turn Golf and Country Club in New Orleans from March 10-12.
Rowing
Irish rowing kicks off its 2024 season at the end of spring break, starting off with the Cardinal Invitational, hosted by Louisville in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Notre Dame returns a pair of All-ACCers from last season. Juniors Natalie Hoefer and Maggie Newell were named to the conference’s first and second teams, respectively. Hoefer was also one of nine rowers bestowed with ACC Rowing Preseason Watch List honors.
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