Syracuse Men’s Lacrosse Falls On the Road to Notre Dame 14-12

Sometimes the sport of lacrosse can be dumbed down to do pretty simple statistics. Face offs and ground balls today in Notre Dame’s 14-12 win over Syracuse, the Irish dominated both winning almost 70% of draws and winning the ground ball battle 40-22 for the orange. It was pretty simple. They didn’t have the ball enough and therefore just couldn’t get the offense going early enough to get enough goals to win this game.

“You know, a lot of it came just from their hustle.” Syracuse Head Coach Gary Gait said, “You know, the Kavanaugh brothers are certainly down there all the time for just being tenacious. And they picked up a bunch of ground balls on their own.”

“Our rope unit, the de middies and the LSM’s were incredible off the ground, so definitely made my job easier and made our whole team job easier.” Notre Dame goalie Liam Entenmann said, “Just getting the ball more. It’s more possessions throughout the game. And when you win those 5050 ground balls and those 5050 plays definitely gives you a lot more confidence that you’ll make the next one.”

Gait later said “In the faceoff early in the games, just were going the way they were winning the clamps, they were getting the balls out and when it was a ground ball, it just kept bouncing their way.”

Syracuse goalie Will Mark kept the orange in this game with 15 saves. The grad student will have to continue his hot streak on Tuesday when Syracuse travels down to Ithaca to take on yet another top-ten team in Cornell. The Orange and Big Red get underway at seven.