Heading into its ACC opener, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse team was 6-0 and ranked as the top team in the country. However, both titles were taken away by the Virginia Cavaliers after the Irish fell 11-9 on March 28. The win propelled Virginia to No. 14 in the country after being previously unranked, and Notre Dame dropped to No. 4 in the country.
The scouting report suggested it was going to be a battle of offenses with Virginia coming into the game ranked seventh in the nation in goals per game and Notre Dame coming into the game fifth in the nation. The beginning of the game followed that script, as it was 3-3 after the first eight minutes. Virginia scored the first two within the first two minutes, but the Irish got three straight before Virginia tied the game up again. Notre Dame found the first two goals of the second quarter, which included sophomore midfielder Matt Jeffery’s second goal of the game. Virginia only scored two in the quarter, and the Irish got one more goal as SSDM Chris Reinhardt started a fast break and went coast-to-coast for his first goal of the year. The Irish entered the halftime locker room up 6-5. By this point though, four of the six Notre Dame goals had been unassisted, and that was foreshadowing for the cause of the Irish’s ultimate demise.
Coming out of the break, senior attacker Will Maheras got things started right away with a goal off an assist from graduate attacker Josh Yago, but Virginia answered with two straight to tie the game up at 7. The score eventually became 9-9, Yago and Maheras each scoring their second goals of the game for the Irish. Virginia’s final goal of the quarter was the real cause of their momentum, and likely led to their win, as they took advantage of a Notre Dame defensive breakdown and scored with only one second left on the clock. It was an unacceptable defense by the Irish to give up a goal at that moment. However, it wasn’t really the defense’s fault in the end, as the Irish failed to score a goal for the rest of the game. Virginia scored with three minutes left, and then delivered the final blow by scoring on an empty net with seven seconds left to seal the game.
Virginia’s starting attackers were very solid in this contest, each of them picking up four points. Senior Truitt Sunderland and freshman Brendan Millon each picked up two goals and two assists, and junior McCabe Millon picked up a goal and three assists. Freshman Robby Hopper was effective for the Cavaliers defensively as he picked up three ground balls and caused two turnovers. Graduate goalkeeper Jake Marek also had a very solid game between the pipes as he picked up 11 saves while allowing nine goals, good for a 55% save percentage.
For the Irish, Maheras and Yago each picked up 2 goals and one assist. The only other assist for the Irish came from senior goalkeeper Thomas Ricciardelli on Reinhardt’s coast-to-coast goal. Defensively for the Irish, senior LSM Will Donovan picked up five ground balls, and freshman LSM Christopher Iuliano caused three turnovers. The Irish were without freshman FOGO Aidan Diaz-Matos in this one, and they missed him as the team went 10 out of 23 from the dot, and picking up a few more possessions could have made a difference.
This last game was played relatively evenly by both teams. Each team had high turnovers numbers, the Irish turning it over 16 times and Cavaliers turning it over 17 times. The Irish took 41 shots with 20 on goal, and the Cavaliers took 38 shots with 22 on goal. The key difference was that even with similar turnover numbers, the Cavaliers moved the ball better as they picked up eight assists compared to the Irish’s three. The game shows some attacking woes for the Irish, as they haven’t eclipsed double-digit goals in three games now, with two of those games being against teams unranked at the time the Irish played them.
After this past weekend, Notre Dame and Duke are each 0-1 in the ACC, and Virginia and Syracuse are 1-0. North Carolina will play their first ACC contest this week against Syracuse, and Duke will play Virginia. The Irish will need to fix their attacking issues before their next contest against No. 1 Richmond, which jumped into the top spot after the Irish’s loss on Saturday. That game is set for Saturday, April 4 at noon, taking place at Chicago’s Martin Stadium on the campus of Northwestern University.
