#5 Virginia lacrosse gets boat-raced by #1 Notre Dame 18-9 in ACC semifinal

From the first whistle, Notre Dame jumped all over the Virginia Cavaliers. The Irish skyrocketed to a 4-0 lead by the 9:44 mark and won the first five face-offs and outshot the ‘Hoos 10-1 before Payton Cormier scored UVA’s first goal of the game. Virginia was never able to recover from the slow start as the Irish crushed the ‘Hoos 18-9. This marked Virginia’s first time losing four consecutive games since 2013.

“This is not what Virginia lacrosse is all about,” head coach Lars Tiffany said. “I feel like I need to apologize to the faithful of Virginia ‘cause they’ve put so much heart and emotion [into] following us and believing in us. This type of effort today is unacceptable.”

Within the first two minutes and 28 seconds, FOGO Anthony Ghobriel recorded two penalties, and the ‘Hoos finished the game with five penalties against Notre Dame’s No. 1 man-up offense (71%), as the Irish went 4-5 in their EMO.

Last week, in Virginia’s 11-9 loss to Notre Dame, the ‘Hoos were outgained in the ground ball battle 50-26, 14 ground balls lower than their average. In Friday’s loss, the ‘Hoos managed to thin the margin to 30-25, but Virginia struggled to register any quality possession time.

“Last game we got dominated on ground balls, and we failed a bunch of clears,” graduate midfielder Chase Yager said. “This game we failed one clear when we were way closer on ground balls. So, I think we recognize that there were a lot of things that don’t show up on the score sheet that we did a lot better.”

Junior goalie Matt Nunes failed to make a save in the second quarter as the Irish more than doubled UVA’s shots by halftime en route to a 10-3 lead. Nunes was later benched for sophomore Kyle Morris with 2:33 left in the third quarter and finished the game with a 32% save percentage. Tiffany said that he and his staff “talked about” benching him at halftime but ultimately decided to stick with Nunes until late in the quarter.

“Matt did not have a great day and we needed Matt to play bigger,” Tiffany said. “Unfortunately he had a mundane day and it gets exaggerated when the goalie in the far end is just remarkable. It was startling how well [Liam] Entenmann played.”

The midseason 2nd team All-American goalie finished the game with 18 saves, his highest save percentage (75) since he stopped 80% against Cleveland State in their season opener. Freshman defender Shawn Lyght, who Notre Dame head coach Kevin Corrigan called the “most underrated defenseman in the league” also limited Connor Shellenberger to zero goals and kept him pointless until there was 8:24 left in the game.

“I don’t want to stand here and act like we solved the riddle to Virginia’s offense, but today was a good day for our defense and a great day for Liam,” Corrigan said.

Graduate attackman Payton Cormier led the ‘Hoos with three goals, his fourth consecutive hat trick, and is now the ACC’s all-time leading goal scorer with 214 career goals. Graduate midfielder Devon McLane led the game with four goals while freshman midfielder Jacob Faison, graduate attackman Pat Kavanaugh and sophomore attackman Chris Kavanaugh had three assists each.

Virginia now awaits to hear its name called at the NCAA tournament selection show, which will be at 9 p.m. on Sunday.

“I absolutely think we deserve to keep playing and I think given an opportunity I fully believe we will win this tournament,” Yager said. “And I don’t think there’s any doubt about that on our team and among our guys.”