In their first game back together since the World Championships in July the U.S. Mens National Team took the field to defeat the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 17-14 at the Seatown Classic in Tukwilla, WA.
The Fighting Irish dominated the faceoff circle and scoreboard in the opening quarter of action, jumping out to a seven-goal lead. Matt Kavanagh seeming to have his way, he would go on to score three goals, and two assists on the day. Facing the adversity of being down by a pretty large deficit the U.S. national team seemed to keep their composure.
“The bounces weren’t going our way. But no one pushed the panic button,” said attack man Marcus Holman. With just less than seven minutes left in the quarter Coach Jeff Tambroni called a timeout to get the U.S. refocused on the tackling the task at hand. This seemed integral in getting the U.S. going, as they put their first points on the board with a beauty of a pass from Jordan Wolf to Ryan Young beating goalie Connor Kelly to make it 7-1. About a minute later the U.S. scored again to end the quarter 7-2.
The second quarter saw the U.S. assert its dominance scoring four unanswered goals. The Irish, showing why they were in the NCAA finals last year, fought back to score three ending the half with a 10-7 lead.
After coming out of their timeout in the first quarter, the U.S. defense seemed to dial up the pressure. “The first turnover after the timeout, Notre Dame called a timeout to draw something up, Coach Cassese wanted us to press the ball, I saw the player was hanging his stick a bit, just tried to take the ball away, got it on the ground, picked it up, went down, pushed transition and got a goal out of it,” said Kyle Hartzell.
The U.S. got the third quarter scoring started, off an ill-advised non-releasable penalty for targeting on ND’s Junior Defenseman Edwin Glazner. With Glazner on the sideline and the Irish up 10-9 Jordan Wolf (3 G, 2 A), who was named second player of the game, connected for his second of two straight goals to tie the game at 10-10, with a little fewer than four minutes to play in the quarter. Marcus Hollman would get the next tally to give the U.S. its first lead of the contest. “Once we started getting used to each other it started clicking,” said Holman. The U.S. would close out the third with four more goals to end the quarter 15-10.
Notre Dame was not done—they rallied to score four goals in the final quarter of play, but the U.S. answered back with two goals of their own to take the victory. After the game I caught up with Junior Attack man Matt Kavanagh to ask him how he felt on his team’s performance. “We pushed the tempo early on and picked our spots well, a lot of guys stepped up. Especially P.J. Finley and John Travisano on faceoffs, I thought we did a pretty good job.”
Coach Kevin Cassese, had this to say about how important it is to the U.S. National team to have these showcase events. “It’s tough to gain support for the U.S. National team when you play every four years, so for us to stay physical playing in showcase events, playing against top notch competition, which is going to come in the form of high level college teams, like Notre Dame, I think it’s critical for the health and development of the U. S. Lacrosse Mens National Team.”
Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan, also spoke of the importance of using opportunities such as yesterday’s game to get the team back competing for the NCAA Championship this upcoming season. “Everything you do from practice, to film, to getting on the field competing against guys like these, it’s all just the steps you have to take. There is work to be done; we know the things we need to do to get better as a team and a program. We spent some time on those things this fall, so this was a great step for us. If we could have every day be a day were we learned as much as we did today, I think we have a good chance at getting back there at the end of this season.”
