Notre Dame men’s lacrosse wins ACC Championship, earns No. 1 seed in NCAA Tournament
Sunday’s Atlantic Coast Conference men’s lacrosse championship game in Charlotte, N.C., was supposed to be an instant classic. No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Duke faced off in a matchup that should have come down to the wire.
It did not.
Instead, the top-ranked Irish rolled over the Blue Devils 16-6. Notre Dame raced out to a 5-0 lead while its defense, anchored by ACC Tournament MVP goalie Liam Entenmann, suffocated anything Duke tried to do.
The Blue Devils found life in the early third quarter, closing an 8-2 halftime gap to 9-5. But the Irish scored seven of the game’s final eight goals and ran away with the win. The defending national champions won their third ACC title in program history in what was less a competition and more a coronation.
Most believed Notre Dame (12-1, 4-0 ACC) would be the NCAA Tournament’s No. 1 seed and Duke would be the No. 2, regardless of what happened in Charlotte. That held true when the selection committee revealed the bracket Sunday night.
The Irish are the top overall seed, and they’ll make their tournament debut in the second round at 5 p.m. ET on Sunday at Arlotta Stadium in South Bend. Notre Dame will face the winner of the tournament’s lone first-round game: Albany vs. Sacred Heart, which will start at a to-be-announced time on Wednesday.
Presuming they win that, the Irish will face the winner of No. 8 Georgetown and Penn State (2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday) in the national quarterfinals on May 18 in at James M. Suart Stadium in Hempstead, N.Y., the home of Hofstra University.
The semifinals are scheduled for May 25, and the national championship is scheduled for May 27. The men’s lacrosse Final Four will take place at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
Notre Dame’s biggest strengths entering the tournament are scoring depth and goaltending, both of which shined in the ACC Championship. Nine different players scored goals Sunday against Duke, and 13 different players tallied at least one point.
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Graduate attackmen Pat Kavanagh and Jake Taylor, as well as junior attackman Chris Kavanagh, lead the No. 2 scoring offense in the nation at 15.82 goals per game. Yale is just ahead, with 15.93 goals per game.
Pat Kavanagh won the ACC Offensive Player of the Year award and is a nomineee for the Tewaaraton Award, known as college lacrosse’s Heisman Trophy. He ranks 10th in the country with 4.82 points per game, and he broke the program’s all-time points record on April 27 against Virginia.
In goal, Entenmann — also a graduate student — won ACC Defensive Player and Goalie of the Year and is also a Tewaaraton nominee.
“This kid’s the best goalie in the country, easily,” Pat Kavanagh said after Notre Dame’s ACC semifinal win over Virginia on Friday. “He’s one of the best goalies to ever play the sport. He just keeps solidifying himself as one of the best of all time, in my opinion. I think a lot of other people feel the same way.”
After longtime head coach Kevin Corrigan spent 34 years in South Bend without a national title, his Irish are heavy favorites to win their second in as many seasons.
