It was a great weekend for college lacrosse at Hofstra as the NCAA quarterfinals saw Notre Dame and Maryland advance to the Final Four at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore this weekend. Notre Dame overcame a five-goal deficit with eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter to beat Albany and end the Thompsons’ run.
Meanwhile, Maryland obliterated Bryant in the first game thanks to nine points from senior midfielder Mike Chanenchuk.
What was the key to both teams’ success in earning a trip to the Final Four this weekend?
Maryland:
The question is really what didn’t Maryland do right? Maryland came out of the gates on fire as they opened up a 7-2 lead after the first quarter. Charlie Raffa dominated the highly anticipated faceoff matchup with Kevin Massa as he went 17-for-20 before exiting in the third quarter with a knee injury.
Mike Chanenchuk also spurred the offense with his nine points on the day. The Long Island native put on quite the show for his return and accounted for five of Maryland’s seven goals by way of a goal or an assist in the opening frame. However, Chanenchuk wasn’t the only one to get in on the scoring as Connor Cannizzaro, Jay Carlson and Joe Locascio all had hat tricks.
It seemed that whatever pregame prep Coach Tillman and his staff did for the Bryant game really worked as Maryland could do no wrong offensively. It also helped that when they scored, they got the ball right back and played a “make it, take it” type of game, which is what Bryant was always used to doing. Coach Mike Pressler eluded to that in the postgame press conference.
Notre Dame:
They seemed destined to make it a blowout early on as the Fighting Irish sprang to a four-goal lead. Much of that was due to Liam O’Connor’s dominance at the faceoff X. He was 9-of-13 in the first half and was key in keeping the ball out of the Thompsons’ sticks.
Unfortunately, not much else went right until the fourth quarter when Coach Corrigan made the change to a 10-man ride which turned the game around. That was a key adjustment as it sparked Notre Dame’s 6-1 run in the last eight minutes of the game. The Fighting Irish were also fortunate to have Conor Kelly come up huge with three seconds left as his positioning helped him save a shot off his helmet with Albany holding possession for the last three minutes of the game.
Of course, simply having Matt Kavangh on the field helped as well. Kavanagh fueled the Irish’s four-goal run in the first quarter as he had two goals and then was not heard from again until the very end. Kavanagh made two game-defining plays in overtime as he saved a ball from going out of bounds that would’ve been a turnover and then he scored the game winner right out of the timeout thereafter.
Lastly, O’Connor was the key to the entire game as he went 21-of-31 on faceoffs and was key in keeping the ball away from the Thompsons as much as possible. Albany also had no answer against him and used three different faceoff guys to try and get some success.
An early look at this weekend’s matchup between the two teams is likely to forecast a defensive battle. This will be the third time the teams have matched up this season and both teams have split the two games. Notre Dame won the most recent game in the ACC Semifinal by a score of 6-5. Maryland won the first meeting in South Bend 12-8 but the score was a lot closer than it seemed.
