2015 NCAA Lacrosse Open Thread

[IrishLax]

THINGS ARE HAPPENING

 

[FDNYIrish1]

Please win this overtime face Off! Just win one! Let's go Irish!!!

 

[Anchorman]

I can only imagine the mood swings in LAX's house right now.

 

[Anchorman]

Welp. Good season. Pretty casual fan but my take was can't play that meh for so long and come out with a win. Also LAX can correct me but seemed like a pretty mediocre outing for Doss.

 

[IrishLax]

Just a total bullshit push/hold call to give Denver that game winning possession. Can't believe they didn't let them play.

Oh well. Healthy Matt Kavanagh and it would've been a completely different team.

 

[FDNYIrish1]

Just a total bullshit push/hold call to give Denver that game winning possession. Can't believe they didn't let them play.

Oh well. Healthy Matt Kavanagh and it would've been a completely different team.

Have they let out what exactly is wrong with Kavanagh? He clearly didn't have the quickness or change of direction expected from him toward the end of the year. I hate that damn call outside the box too.

 

[IrishLax]

Have they let out what exactly is wrong with Kavanagh? He clearly didn't have the quickness or change of direction expected from him toward the end of the year. I hate that damn call outside the box too.

Now that the season is over I think it's OK for me to say he has a leg injury. Greatly hampered his dodging ability.

 

[Anchorman]

Now that the season is over I think it's OK for me to say he has a leg injury. Greatly hampered his dodging ability.

Not to second-guess the coaches, but it almost seemed by the end of the year we'd be better off rolling someone else out there. I'm assuming opposing teams were well aware by this point and he was a bit of an afterthought.

 

[IrishLax]

Not to second-guess the coaches, but it almost seemed by the end of the year we'd be better off rolling someone else out there. I'm assuming opposing teams were well aware by this point and he was a bit of an afterthought.

Yeah. First of all, it's remarkable that the team was able to basically re-tool into a midfield driven team with only Doyle to initiate and still win the ACC regular season crown, make a final 4 after earning the #1 seed, and finish 12-3 overall. It's really sad that the best team Notre Dame ever had got nipped by injuries... it'd be like Jerian Grant spraining his ankle right before the ACC tournament. You're stuck watching a team battle through adversity instead of stomping the opposition.

The idea was to keep Kavanagh on the field as a decoy. This is certainly a decent strategy, as it occupies the opponent's best longpole on him giving Doyle a better matchup against their #2 defender. It worked... until today. Denver -- having played Notre Dame before -- plugged in the tape of what he did to them out there (where he was electric with 4+2 against their All-American defender) and compared it to his play against Towson and Albany and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was hurt and would be ineffective. No amount of keeping his injuries hush-hush can dispel what is that easily visible on film. So Denver put Burgdorf on Doyle and the offense sputtered until they let Perkovic play hero ball.

The craziest thing about Kavanagh's injuries is that it basically eliminated two players from ND's offense. Wynne lived off of having two dodging threats at attack that could both feed him if teams made sloppy slides. But without the ability of Kavanagh to run by defenders, Wynne's value dried up too.

Just a perfect storm of classic Notre Dame luck. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

[irishrb]

Yeah. First of all, it's remarkable that the team was able to basically re-tool into a midfield driven team with only Doyle to initiate and still win the ACC regular season crown, make a final 4 after earning the #1 seed, and finish 12-3 overall. It's really sad that the best team Notre Dame ever had got nipped by injuries... it'd be like Jerian Grant spraining his ankle right before the ACC tournament. You're stuck watching a team battle through adversity instead of stomping the opposition.

The idea was to keep Kavanagh on the field as a decoy. This is certainly a decent strategy, as it occupies the opponent's best longpole on him giving Doyle a better matchup against their #2 defender. It worked... until today. Denver -- having played Notre Dame before -- plugged in the tape of what he did to them out there (where he was electric with 4+2 against their All-American defender) and compared it to his play against Towson and Albany and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was hurt and would be ineffective. No amount of keeping his injuries hush-hush can dispel what is that easily visible on film. So Denver put Burgdorf on Doyle and the offense sputtered until they let Perkovic play hero ball.

The craziest thing about Kavanagh's injuries is that it basically eliminated two players from ND's offense. Wynne lived off of having two dodging threats at attack that could both feed him if teams made sloppy slides. But without the ability of Kavanagh to run by defenders, Wynne's value dried up too.

Just a perfect storm of classic Notre Dame luck. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So true......and so freakin' annoying.....still po'd about them not winning it. Once I saw cuse and nc get knocked off, I really thought ND had it!

 

[OchoShayneO]

What an incredible game. Play of the game was the goal at the end of the half. Started with a bad bad shot. Great come back, I loved the ways the guys were scrapping for GB's in the second half. Last play of the game, you can't let the guy with the ball roll back! I know its a staple of Coach's defense, keep the Miller one way on that play and you have help, make him move the ball through X and the mumbo on the backside is covered. Miller rolls back and easily moves the ball through the point, and there's no time to recover and beat the ball to the backside. Denver got the exact shot they wanted to end the game and it looked easy.

 

[IrishLax]

Notre Dame finishes in the final poll where it started in the pre-season... #2. Crazy that #1 (Denver) and #2 (Notre Dame) basically held serve. Healthy Matt Kavanagh and this was a championship team. Sigh.

Next year will involve completely retooling the 1st midfield around Sergio and finding a complimentary player to Kavanagh/Wynne. Hardest guy to replace will be Jack Near... but tell you what, Brendan Collins has Jack Near potential as a 2-way guy.

Defense returns everyone and will be stellar. They were #1 in adjusted defensive efficiency this year even with some soft goalie play at times. Should be best in the country yet again.

Faceoffs will be by far the biggest question mark. Need a game changer like Baptiste.

Nike/LM Division I Men's Top 20 - Lacrosse Magazine

 

[IrishLax]

Kavanagh is reportedly having an operation Tuesday to reattach two muscles he tore off his pelvic bone. Here's to a speedy and full recovery.

 

[irishrb]

Kavanagh is reportedly having an operation Tuesday to reattach two muscles he tore off his pelvic bone. Here's to a speedy and full recovery.

Wow, props to him for playing through that. No wonder he wasn't himself. Hopefully it wasn't a mistake playing and he's fully ready to go soon!

 

[irishrb]

LAX,
My boys were reading ESPN this afternoon and are trying to tell me that ND's lacrosse recruiting this year is really weak....Only 1 player in the top 50....What do you know about their most recent recruiting for 2016?

 

[IrishLax]

LAX,
My boys were reading ESPN this afternoon and are trying to tell me that ND's lacrosse recruiting this year is really weak....Only 1 player in the top 50....What do you know about their most recent recruiting for 2016?

There are some talented guys in the 2015 class that will be on campus this fall. That includes Ryder Garnesy who took a PG year and could be an early impact player. It's still up in the air who is going to take over for Doyle on attack, and how they're going to reconfigure the midfield lines. There are some very good defenders, and there is midfielder Timmy Phillips who was a "superstar" recruit early in his high school career and a very good athlete, but I think I heard he had a down senior season because of injuries or something. I don't know if he did much in the Under Armour game because I didn't watch.

The 2016 class is better than it probably looks on its surface. Stephen Chase and Brian Willetts both are taking PG years and will be part of the 2016 class... they're both very good players. Bryan Costabile is another guy that I don't think is on any top 50 list but should be very good for Notre Dame.

On its surface, the 2017 class looks really good right now but I don't think we really have any clue how good these guys will be until they get older.

 

[irishrb]

Appreciate the information. I'm kind of surprised by the run they have been on that they don't have higer rated players, but hopefully they pan out. I do know on paper Duke looks like they are killing the recruiting trail.

 

[IrishLax]

Appreciate the information. I'm kind of surprised by the run they have been on that they don't have higer rated players, but hopefully they pan out. I do know on paper Duke looks like they are killing the recruiting trail.

Notre Dame rather famously doesn't do much early recruiting, and accordingly they're rarely going to have a class that looks like UNC/Duke/Hopkins/Syracuse/UVA/etc.

But they tend to get a lot of guys that are much better than the "superstars" that bust at some other programs. For example, Sergio Perkovic was a decently rated player, and he's better than 90% of the people slotted above him in the recruiting rankings for his year. Matt Landis is better than 100% of the people who were slotted ahead of him. That's pretty routine for Notre Dame... getting a Matt Kavanagh type player that was a #1 recruit coming out of HS tends to be a rare occurrence.