Let’s ignore the scoreboard for a second. Well, okay, let’s just use the scoreboard as context, not totally ignore it, I guess.
Midway through the second quarter against #20 Michigan last Saturday, Marquette men’s lacrosse was tied at four goals each with the Wolverines. Marquette had outshot Michigan 19-7 in the first quarter, and up through Brady Nicholas’ rebound pole goal, the shots were 6-5 favoring the Golden Eagles in the second. That’s 25-12 in shots just to keep it even.
This means that Marquette
was outshot 26-18 the rest of the way as Michigan outscored the Golden Eagles 10-3.
The ratios there are all out of whack. That’s way too many shots for Marquette with too few goals and way too many goals for Michigan on that many shots. Now, Michigan was #20 in the preseason Inside Lacrosse media poll for a reason, so that’s absolutely part of the problem for the Golden Eagles.
Marquette has a new problem in that regard on Saturday, as they face the preseason #8 team in the country that hasn’t even played a game yet and somehow still managed to move up a spot with the release of the first in-season IL poll. That’s probably bad news for the Golden Eagles in general, but that’s what happens when you schedule Michigan and Notre Dame back to back to start your year.
What’s Jake Richard going to do about any of this? I guess we’ll find out on Saturday, but at least he has quality in game, in season real information to work with heading into the second straight game against a ranked foe.
Game #2: vs #7 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (0-0)
Date: Saturday, February 14, 2026
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Andy Glockner Memorial Bubble, Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+ with Matt Yeazel and Eric Simon on the call
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Marquette is 0-13 all time against Notre Dame. The two teams have met in every year of Marquette’s existence as a program except the 2020 season which was ended early. This is the sixth straight year that Notre Dame is ranked in the top 10 at the time of the game, and the Irish have been ranked for every single meeting. MU hasn’t kept the game within 10 goals since a 10-3 loss in March 2021.
I’d like to be able to tell you one thing or another about Notre Dame for sure, but as you can see from their record, they haven’t actually started their season yet. They did play two exhibition games, one against Utah and one against Air Force, but none of the three schools involved are publicizing the results. That’s fine, because neither one necessarily had to be played by normal timing rules and so on, but it does leave us a little bit empty handed when trying to preview this game.
What we know for certain is that Notre Dame “only” made it to the Quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament last year and finished the season with a record of 9-5 after winning the 2023 and 2024 national championships. The Irish are picked to finish second in the ACC this season, which is quite the feat given that all five teams in the league were in the top 14 of the preseason Inside Lacrosse media poll.
Notre Dame has two guys on the preseason all-ACC team in Will Donovan and Shawn Lyght. Donovan is a three-time All-American long stick midfielder, while Lyght was named the preseason Defenseman of the Year by USA Lacrosse. That’s “in the entire country,” for the record.
The Irish will probably be pretty solid on the defensive end, especially with Thomas Ricciardelli returning after nearly 800 minutes in net last season. The offensive end of things might be a little bit of a toss-up heading into their first game of the season. Notre Dame is replacing their top three point getters from last season, including Chris Kavanagh who was a heavy feature of the offense. He led the team in goals and assists with 39 and 27, and he took nearly twice as many shots as anyone else. Specifically, Kavanagh took twice as many shots as the other two guys that ND is also losing from last season, so that’s three times as many shots as Will Angrick, the leading returning scorer. Angrick is no goof with 15 goals and 12 assists last season, it’s just that he wasn’t the featured player, and neither was Jalen Seymour or Will Maheras, the next two guys down the point chart from last year. Head coach Kevin Corrigan might be still figuring out how to activate these guys as the tippy top guys in the lineup by the time we get to first draw on Saturday, and that’s something that MU’s defense might be able to work with out of the gate.
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