Notre Dame men's lacrosse roars into national title game with wire-to-wire win over Syracuse

Notre Dame did something it hadn’t yet in this year’s NCAA Tournament against Syracuse at Scott Stadium on Saturday — jump all over an opponent from the opening face off, nearly breaking the foe’s will before the Orange could ever even get into the flow of the match and generate a semblance of one.

The Fighting Irish had trouble scoring in the first 10 minutes against Jacksonville and Johns Hopkins. Total goals in that span in those two games: two, combined. They tallied not one, not two but three goals in the first 10 minutes against the Orange. Then tacked on another two minutes later to take a four-goal advantage for good measure.

Only, the Orange aren’t the Dolphins or Blue Jays.

They’re much more potent. And they showed it.

Syracuse stormed back with three goals in the final two minutes of the first quarter to nearly reset the score. The Orange couldn’t get the equalizer, though, and the Irish made them pay. By the 12:57 mark of the third quarter, No. 2 Notre Dame was back up by four goals. The second of such margins was too much for No. 6 Syracuse to overcome.

Notre Dame won, 15-7, to secure a spot in Monday’s national championship game against No. 1 Princeton at 1 p.m. ET at the same venue in Charlottesville, Va.

“Our guys worked really hard,” Notre Dame head coach Kevin Corrigan said. “They all really care, and we got great faith in each other that somebody is going to show up, and thankfully somebody did again today.”

Syracuse appeared to immediately cut back into the Notre Dame lead midway through the third, but the Orange had a goal called back for a crease violation. Corrigan challenged the play, and his intuition was spot on. Moments later, two-sport Irish freshman Dylan Faison scored his first NCAA Tournament goal to give the Irish their largest lead of the afternoon — five goals. At that time, Syracuse had only scored four.

Still, the Orange would not go away. They scored three unanswered goals in short succession at the end of the third, eerily similar to the run they went on at the end of the first. Suddenly, it was a two-goal game again — 9-7. However, a two-minute non-releasable penalty taken with 15 seconds left in the third is ultimately what did Syracuse in. Irish midfielder Matt Jeffery got rocked in the chops by a crosscheck on a play in which he fired way high and wide at the end of the shot clock, and the Irish offense made the offender pay for such a costly and, frankly, silly infraction.

Notre Dame scored three goals in the first two minutes of the fourth quarter on the locked man advantage. Just like that, the Irish regained their five-goal edge — 12-7. Syracuse showed resiliency in coming back multiple times throughout the course of the match, but needing to make up a handful of goals worth of ground in the final 13 minutes of action was absolutely asking too much. Especially when Notre Dame went into pour it on mode.

“Lacrosse is a game of runs,” Notre Dame attack man Josh Yago said. “We knew they were going to go on theirs, and they went on theirs right before that.”

The Irish got a goal each from both of their football wide receivers, Jeffery and Faison. They got two goals each from Luke Miller, Brock Behrman and Max Busenkell. Yago had a hat trick and his second consecutive seven-point game of the tournament.

Irish goalie Thomas Ricciardelli made 14 saves. Syracuse’s leading point man for the season, Joey Spanilla, was held to two assists. He didn’t score a goal despite coming into the match with 35 on the year. That’s the National Defensive Player of the Year Shawn Lyght effect, Notre Dame’s Tewaaraton Award finalist getting the best of Syracuse’s.

“Shawn is never going to say that he absolutely shut him down, but he did,” Ricciardelli said. “Shawn is just an absurdly humble guy, and the way he plays out there makes me so confident and comfortable in the net.”

Everywhere you looked, there was a Notre Dame player who did something — or many things — that led to a convincing Fighting Irish victory. That’s the type of performance that gets a team into the national championship game, and it’s the type of performance the Irish will need again if they’re to win it against the top team in the country in Princeton.

The Tigers took down Duke, 14-7, in the first national semifinal. Monday, it comes down to the two best teams in men’s college lacrosse for the title.