Notre Dame men's lacrosse nearly sweeps ACC awards
Notre Dame men’s lacrosse won the national championship in 2023 and returned most of their meaningful contributors for 2024, including graduate attackman Pat Kavanagh, graduate goalie Liam Entenmann and head coach Kevin Corrigan. The three of them nearly swept the Atlantic Coast Conference’s season awards.
Kavanagh won ACC Offensive Player of the Year for leading the second-best scoring attack in the country this season, tallying 19 goals and 34 assists this season. He finished third in the ACC in points per game with 4.81, and he set Notre Dame’s career points record with 274.
Entenmann won both Defensive Player of the Year and Goalie of the Year, both for the second-straight year. He is, in fact, the only Goalie of the Year in ACC history, as the conference created the award ahead of the 2023 season. Entenmann finished the season with 117 saves, totaling a .527 save percentage and allowing only 9.86 goals per game.
Kavanagh and Entenmann are two of the 25 nominees for the Tewaaraton Award, which is college lacrosse’s version of the Heisman Trophy.
Corrigan, in his 36th season with the Irish — that’s the longest tenure of any Division I men’s lacrosse coach — won Coach of the Year after leading Notre Dame to a 10-1 record (4-0 ACC). With the lone blemish being an overtime loss to Georgetown, the Irish were actually better in the regular season than they were when they won the national title.
In 2023, the Irish went 10-2 in the regular season with two losses to Virginia.
Freshman of the Year is the only ACC award that did not go to Notre Dame. It went to North Carolina attackman Owen Duffy, who scored 32 goals and 22 assists (54 points) in his first season.
Of the 19 spots on the All-ACC Men’s Lacrosse Team, seven went to the Irish. That’s the most of any school. Along with Kavanagh and Entenmann, the following Notre Dame players earned All-ACC honors: senior midfielder Eric Dobson, sophomore long-stick midfielder Will Donovan, junior attackman Chris Kavanagh (Pat’s younger brother), junior faceoff man Will Lynch and junior midfielder Ben Ramsey.
The No. 1 Irish enter the ACC Tournament on an eight-game win streak, with their last loss being the Georgetown game on Feb. 25. No. 4 Virginia, whom Notre Dame beat 11-9 on Saturday, awaits the Irish in the semifinals at 5 p.m. ET on Friday in Charlotte, N.C..
The winner of that game will face the winner of No. 3 Duke and No. 2 Syracuse in the ACC Championship at noon ET on Sunday.
