'We know what it takes': Notre Dame men's lacrosse peaking at right time entering quarterfinal vs. Penn State

Notre Dame men’s lacrosse had an up-and-down regular season. The Irish finished 8-4, including a loss to Ohio State on their home turf.

Mid-May, however, is different.

The two-time defending national champion, Notre Dame blitzed No. 4 Ohio State on Sunday in Columbus, Ohio. After falling behind 3-1 early in the second quarter, the Irish outscored the Buckeyes 14-3 the rest of the way.

This is not the same team that tore through the rest of college lacrosse on its way to the grand prize last season, but it does have quite a bit of postseason experience. And it used that to its advantage in Round 1.

“When you get punched in the face, especially during a playoff game, you lean on your experiences that you’ve had in the past, and that led to success,” senior attackman Chris Kavanagh said Wednesday. “I think that’s our motto this time of year, and that’s what we’ll keep doing.”

Kavanagh, a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award (college lacrosse’s Heisman Trophy), led Notre Dame with 5 points against Ohio State. Graduate student attackman Jake Taylor, another veteran of back-to-back titles, was right behind him with 4.

It didn’t matter that the Buckeyes got the Irish in early March. In the NCAA Tournament, the latter dominated every relevant statistical category: Shot attempts (43-28), ground balls (40-20) and faceoff wins (18-7).

The more battle-tested team won going away, and it’s peaking at the right time.

“We know what it takes to win,” Kavanagh said. “We’ve been there, we’ve been to the big stage, so I think we gotta lean on that all the way through.”

One player who did not have that postseason experience was junior goalie Thomas Ricciardelli, who won the starting job in preseason and faced the near-impossible task of replacing program legend Liam Entenmann. As head coach Kevin Corrigan put it in February, it took three decades for Notre Dame to find one Entenmann, so expecting his successor to play at the same level just wouldn’t be fair.

But in his first playoff start, Ricciardelli was superb. He made 15 saves and only allowed 6 goals.

“To be honest, it was the defense giving me shots I could save,” Ricciardelli said. “My job is to save the ball, so I try to do that as much as possible, and the defense kind of set me up for success.”

In advance of his postseason debut, Ricciardelli leaned on Entenmann for advice.

“He’s like, ‘Hey, you’ve been at the dome where there’s 11,000 people,'” Ricciardelli said. “It’s not about the pressure that you have on you from the outsiders’ perspective, it’s the pressure that I put on myself. And he said, ‘You can’t have that going into these games.’

“Especially in playoff scenarios, it’s always better just to be comfortable where you are and do your job. And that’s really kind of what I’ve been trying to do, or what I tried to do that last game, and it worked out.”

Up next is No. 5 Penn State, who went 10-4 during the regular season, at noon ET on Sunday in Annapolis, Md. The winner advances to the Final Four in Boston, where it will face either No. 1 Cornell or Richmond.

Notre Dame is unseeded, as opposed to 2024 when it was the No. 1 overall seed or 2023 when it was No. 3. For once, the two-time champs are the underdogs. But it might not matter if they keep playing like this.

“I think the biggest thing is we took good risks,” Corrigan said. “But we stayed very focused forward. If we made a mistake, we just focused on, ‘What’s the situation now?’ But we made some plays, too, because we were playing that way.”