After an exciting and eventful 2-0 home stand the past two weekends, the Syracuse Orange are back out on the road for their regular season finale with the No. 1 team in the country, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
The setup for this game is absolutely huge. A Top-5 matchup in the final game of the regular season, with big implications on the line for the ACC Tournament and NCAA resumes. There’s tons of star power on the field, headlined by another potential Joey Spallina v. Shawn Lyght showdown. It’s
Senior Day for what should be a full house at Arlotta Stadium, and the game is immediately being followed by the Notre Dame spring football game.
Yeah, setups for regular season games don’t typically get much better than that. Too bad the punchline is that the noon game is being broadcast on ACC Network Extra.
Season so far
Notre Dame is 9-1 overall and 2-1 in the ACC so far this season. They started the year 6-0, which included wins over Georgetown, Maryland, Ohio State and Michigan.
They suffered their only loss on March 28 at Virginia, 11-9, and have since reeled off wins over Richmond, North Carolina and Duke.
Scouting Notre Dame
The Irish are, as usual, a team built from the back. Their defense is their strength, and they appear to be a vintage, lockdown version of ND’s defense. They rank No. 3 in the country in scoring defense at 8.00 goals-against per game.
In the three games since their loss, they’ve been even better, holding Richmond, UNC and Duke to a combined 19 goals in three games. Their best performance of the year probably came in holding the Tar Heels’ high-powered offense to five total goals in Arlotta Stadium just two weeks ago.
Their offense is no slouch either, ranking No. 20 nationally at 12.70 goals per game. They are not an offense built on star power, at all, but their committee approach gets the job done and produces at a solid rate, especially when combined with their stud defense.
To no one’s surprise, they also make a lot of the plays that help win you games. They face-off well (55.8 percent), clear the ball at over 90 percent, and finish on the man-up (47.6 percent). They also rarely commit penalties and hold onto the ball pretty solidly. If you’re going to beat them, they’re not going to help you do it.
Names to Know
Notre Dame’s offense can be tough to track because it’s difficult to predict which one of their contributors will be the one to beat you on any given day. Their total numbers are also always misleading because they play such a small number of games, relatively speaking, per coach Kevin Corrigan’s usual strategy.
This year’s offensive leader is Air Force transfer, Josh Yago, who leads the team with 32 points, 12 assists and is tied for the team lead with 20 goals. He’s a real leader with the shooting ability to match if you give him the space to prove it. Sophomore Luke Miller also has 20 goals and is second on the team with 29 points. Junior Brock Behrman has been productive with 12 goals and 11 assists, while senior Will Maheras has 11 goals and nine assists.
Their midfield is a solid blend of graduate-level experience with the likes of Jalen Seymour (10G, 2A) and Will Angrick (8G, 3A), combined with the tantalizing youth of freshman Teddy Lally (10G, 7A), sophomore Matt Jeffery (12G, 5A) and freshman Dylan Faison (3G, 1A).
Jeffery and Faison are both on the football team (Dylan is the younger brother of Jordan, who’s taking the year off from lacrosse to focus solely on football) and bring a serious athletic presence to the game. Jeffery, in particular, is a freak athlete with the ability to make highlight reel plays on the lacrosse field. The ‘Cuse rope unit is going to have a heck of a time defending him. Faison has taken a while to break into the rotation, but just had a breakout game last weekend against Duke with a pair of goals and an assist.
Tyler Spano and Aidan Diaz-Matos run things at the dot for a ND team that wins 56 percent of its face-offs. Spano is the starter and has won 59 percent of the 128 restarts he’s taken, while freshman Diaz-Matos is off to a very solid start with 54 percent on 92 takes. Frighteningly, Spano was excellent against Brady Wambach of UNC, going 10-of-17 against him. If the transitive property is in play on this one, then Johnny Mullen and Drew Angelo could be in trouble with the way things have been going for them.
The Notre Dame defense is an absolute force, a puzzle box that most teams struggle to unlock. They held North Carolina to five, Duke to six, Richmond and Maryland to eight, and Michigan to four.
Shawn Lyght (16GB, 9CT) is the name everyone knows, thought by many to be the best defender in the nation. Joey Spalling got the better of him last season, but what will be in store in a new year?
Joining him on defense at close are two-time ACC Defensive Player of the Week Nate Schwitzenberg (13GB, 11CT) and Will Gallagher (18GB, 7CT), while LSM Will Donovan (32GB, 11CT) was a PLL pick and is one of the best midfield poles in the country.
The man who holds the whole thing together stands between the pipes and is named Thomas Ricciardelli. I hate to even utter it, but he’s having an Entenmann-like season with 112 saves in 10 games, a 7.75 GAA and a 60.2 save percentage.
He also does a lot more than stand between the pipes as one of the most aggressive goalies in terms of venturing out of the crease to track down loose balls and help move it up the field. He’s super athletic and loves to do more than patrol the goal. He’s got 28 ground balls, two caused turnovers and an assist to his name in those departments.
And for the cherry on top, he’s been especially lethal recently. In five of the past six games, Ricciardelli has finished with a save percentage of 63 percent or better. In three of those games, he was above 70 percent.
This is going to be a uniquely difficult challenge for the Syracuse offense.
