SOUTH BEND — For the third time in four years, Notre Dame lacrosse is headed back to Championship Weekend.
Josh Yago had seven points on four goals and three assists and Matt Jeffery added three assists for the Irish in a 15-9 quarterfinal win over unseeded Johns Hopkins on Saturday May 16 in Hempstead, N.Y.
The second-seeded Irish (12-2) will face the Syracuse-North Carolina winner on Saturday May 23 in the national semifinals in Charlottesville, Va. Notre Dame, seeking its third NCAA Tournament title in four years, owns regular-season wins over both teams this year.
“Our midfield is definitely a strength for our team,” Yago told ESPNU in a postgame interview, “but we also have an attack unit that can score, we have a defense that can hold it down and we have an All-American goalie. From top to bottom, we’re one of the best teams in the nation and we’re going to show it.”
Knotted at six after 30 minutes, with both teams slipping often on Hofstra’s slick artificial playing surface, Notre Dame took command in the third period. Three goals in the opening 4:35 after the break knocked the upstart Blue Jays (10-6) onto their heels.
Losing sophomore midfielder Reese DiCicco to a right wrist injury early in the second half seemed to take some bite out of the Hopkins defense.
Yago, the Air Force graduate transfer, got the rally started. He used a Will Angrick pick and blasted in a left-handed shot on the move with 12:33 left in the third.
Brock Behrman gave the Irish their first two-goal lead of the day, using a Yago assist a little over one minute later, and Jeffery pushed the lead to three with a lefty blast of his own.
“We knew it was going to be a slippery field,” said Jeffery, who doubles as a wideout on the Irish football team. “We didn’t let that change how we played the game. When we changed direction, we had to stick more to the ground. We did that very well.”
Overcoming the quarterfinal hurdle
The NCAA quarterfinal round had been Notre Dame’s relative bugaboo over the past decade and a half.
Since 2011, the Irish entered Saturday just 5-7 in the quarterfinal round, including last year’s second-half collapse against Penn State. The Nittany Lions wiped out a six-goal deficit with eight unanswered scores down the stretch to end the Irish’s two-year reign.
Four of those losses had come against lower-seeded or unseeded teams. Just once, however, had Notre Dame lost at this stage as a No. 2 seed: 2013 against eventual national champion Duke.
By halftime Notre Dame held a 19-10 edge on groundballs and had won eight of 13 faceoffs. The Irish, however, couldn’t get a handle on Hopkins and its deliberate offense.
Six goals resulted from just eight shots on goal against Irish senior goalie Thomas Ricciardelli. Notre Dame, meanwhile, netted just half of its 12 shots on goal against the Blue Jays’ hulking goaltender, Oran Gelinas (6-foot-4, 240 pounds).
Those trends changed markedly in the second half.
“Just really proud of our guys, how they came back and turned it into more of our game,” Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan said. “Played fearlessly. We didn’t come out in the second half like, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s a one-goal game.’ We came out like, ‘Let’s make some plays and wins this thing,’ and that’s what we did.”
Notre Dame ended with a 15-11 advantage in faceoffs, led 37-22 in groundballs, outshot the Blue Jays 41-26 and killed off all three man-down situations, which had been a season-long issue.
Ricciardelli finished with six saves, and four of Yago’s Irish teammates joined him with multiple goals: Jeffery, Behrman, Will Maheras and leading scorer Luke Miller.
“The thing that makes it hard to defend us is right now I couldn’t tell you who our best (offensive) player is,” Corrigan said, “so I’m certain that the people watching us don’t have a lot better idea than I do. And no one on our team cares. … When you have that kind of approach and you have a number of guys with that kind of ability, it becomes pretty special.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame lacrosse rolls late in quarterfinal win over Johns Hopkins
Reporting by Mike Berardino, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
