The Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse team is coming off a solid year, qualifying for the NCAA Tournament and reaching the last eight before losing to the Penn State Nittany Lions in a second half collapse that surely haunted Irish fans all off-season. Fortunately, the wait for the 2026 lacrosse season is soon to be over, with two exhibition games to be played on Friday and Sunday, and the regular season starting around three weeks later on Feb. 14.
Notre Dame will play a very similar schedule to the one it played last year with nine of their 11 games being against teams they played a season ago. Additionally, seven of those showdowns are against teams who made the tournament last year. With only 18 spots, the NCAA Lacrosse Tournament is one of the hardest tournaments to make in all of college sports. A good way to reach the tournament is to schedule the toughest opponents possible, and the Irish have certainly done that.
Notre Dame will open the season up with two of its easier opponents, starting the year off in Milwaukee to face Marquette before hosting Bellarmine. After those two games to ease the Irish in, the challenge really starts as the team faces Georgetown, Maryland, and Ohio State in consecutive games, all three of whom reached the postseason a year prior. The Irish played those same three teams consecutively last year as well, going 1-2 in that stretch. The lone victory was an 11-9 thriller against the Hoyas in Washington. Their next contest against Maryland was also a thriller as the Terrapins beat the Irish by one goal in a game where Notre Dame held the lead at the half. Maryland would go on to make the finals of the NCAA Tournament before losing to Cornell. Just as they were last year, it is likely the Terrapins will be Notre Dame’s toughest opponent of the year. The Irish then played Ohio State in their next game and again lost by one with Ohio State scoring the winning goal at Arlotta Stadium with seven seconds left. The Irish would get their revenge in the tournament though, beating the Buckeyes 15-6 in Columbus in what was widely considered to be their best performance of the year.
Fans can expect these three teams the Irish face to be very strong once again. In the preseason rankings by Inside Lacrosse, Maryland is ranked No. 1, Georgetown is ranked No. 5, and Ohio State is ranked No. 10. For context, the Irish are ranked No. 8. With Michigan claiming the final spot in the opening poll, nine of Notre Dame’s 11 adversaries enter the year ranked.
To round out that tough stretch of games, the Irish then face a team that just missed out on the tournament last year in the Michigan Wolverines. That game would be tough on its own, but considering the gauntlet that the Irish will have just been through, it gets that much more difficult. After that, the Irish will start conference play, facing the perceived weakest ACC team in the Virginia Cavaliers. The Cavaliers are the lowest ranked of the ACC opponents in the top 20, but a top-15 opponent on road soil is no easy win. After that, the Irish will travel to Evanston, Illinois for a battle with Richmond. The Spiders shocked everyone last year with an opening round upset of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, before narrowly falling to eventual champion Cornell in round two. This year though, the small-school Spiders won't scurry up on anybody, entering the season ranked ninth.
These first eight games are going to be incredibly important, but the key games are going to be the three the Irish have to close out the season as they end the conference slate with North Carolina, Duke and Syracuse, all three of which made the tournament last season. The ACC is regarded as the toughest conference in collegiate lacrosse, and these four teams are the reason why. The Irish were able to get the best of both North Carolina and Duke last year, beating North Carolina 12-6 and Duke 14-7, and those relatively dominant wins were a large part of the reason why the Irish made the tournament. After those two games, the Irish will welcome the defending ACC champions in the Syracuse Orange to Northern Indiana. The toughest opponent the Irish face this year is projected to be Maryland, but Syracuse is a close second as the Orange come in as the projected No. 3 team in the country. The Irish are looking for revenge here as they faced the Orange twice last year, dropping close contests in Upstate New York and in the ACC Tournament. Syracuse won comfortably in the JMA Wireless Dome in early April before closing strong to best the Irish by two in Charlotte in early May.
Last season, 8-4 was enough for the Irish to sneak in the tournament, but a large part of that was because three of its four losses were within two goals, and all but two of their wins were by more than two goals. The Irish also went 3-2 in their ACC contests. The good news for the Irish is that there is margin for error with the schedule they play. Going undefeated with this slate would be unexpected, and while it may not demand perfection, it certainly demands the Irish to prove credibility. Notre Dame will still need to win a fair amount of the toss-up games if they want a chance at another deep postseason run. There are a lot of exciting matchups for this Notre Dame team this season, and Irish fans should be confident in their team's ability to handle these tight games.
