Why upcoming NCAA Tournament run won't be anything like those of 2023, 2024 for Notre Dame

The biggest mistake Notre Dame could make in trying to win a third men’s lacrosse national championship in the last four years is trying to make its upcoming NCAA Tournament run a mirror image of either one of the prior two.

At that point, the No. 2 nationally seeded Fighting Irish would be attempting to become something they’re not — they’re not the 2023 team, they’re not the 2024 team — and that’d be a waste of time. It’d also be a waste of time to look too far ahead. Getting too far out in front themselves rivals peering into the past as the largest roadblock in the way of Notre Dame (10-2) and another national title.

All the Irish should be focused on right now is beating Jacksonville (11-5) at 12 p.m. ET at Arlotta Stadium in South Bend, Ind., Sunday afternoon.

That’s it.

“There’s no future in looking ahead past anything other than Sunday,” Corrigan said. “Tournament runs happen if you win Sunday. They don’t happen if you don’t. So, Sunday is everything.”

This Notre Dame team not being the 2023 or 2024 teams was not a sleight. The current squad has a tremendous chance of accomplishing what those did in winning it all. But they’re going to need to do it differently.

The Irish had some of the best players in program history for the back-to-back triumphs — the brothers Kavanagh. Pat and Chris. The former finished the 2023 season with 77 points. The latter had 62. In 2024, Chris had 81. Pat had 80.

This year — with potentially four games to go, keep in mind — nobody on the Notre Dame roster has hit 40 points yet. Josh Yago leads with way with 38. Luke Miller is the only other Irish player in the 30s with 33. That doesn’t mean Notre Dame is offensively inept, though.

Far from it.

Eight Irish players currently have 11 or more goals. That’s the exact number of players Notre Dame had hit that number of goals in 2024. In 2023, the total was nine players with 11 or more goals. So, this is an on-par offensive output as far as having what’s required to be the last team standing goes.

The Irish are just going about it another way. A More balanced way. There’s beauty in that.

“We’ve had somebody different almost every game that’s stepped up,” Corrigan said. “No one is a big surprise. It’s just that the game kind of came to them that day. And the way we’re playing, very unselifishly and with good movement and everything, so everybody gets chances.

“So we’ve had different people step up at different times, and that can be a real strength for ya. It might be that, you look at it and go, you don’t have that one guy to go to in certain situations. But you have a lot of different guys who you know can make plays.”

The goal scoring isn’t ever going to be what Corrigan fixates on the most within the confines of a match anyway. He looks for what he calls “contributions to winning.” Those don’t show up on a stat sheet, but they make the difference on the scoreboard at the end of 60 minutes.

“We call them ‘invisible plays,'” he said. “There are plays when a guy is in the right position and communicating properly. Nothing happens. Well, how do you chart, ‘nothing happened’? Right? Except that you know it when you see it. It’s like pornography. If it’s done right, you know it when you see it.

“Our guys have that ability to make those plays that keep something from happening which I think is even better than stopping something as it’s happening.”

So much of those contributions to winning, the invisible plays, come from Notre Dame’s stout defensive corps led by Tewaaraton Award finalist Shawn Lyght. He doesn’t have a single point to his name this season, but he’s one of the best players in the country at doing what he does — completely shutting opposing offensive players down.

Notre Dame has the No. 7 scoring defense in the nation, only allowing 8.83 goals per game. Lyght is a major reason for that. He’s the first defenseman to be a Tewaaraton Award finalist since 2016 when fellow Fighting Irish star Matt Landis accomplished the rare feat.

Corrigan called Lyght, a 6-3 junior who’s the cousin of former Notre Dame defensive back Todd Lyght, “a cover guy like you dream about” and said that “there’s not a matchup that you can’t put him on and feel really good about.” He’s the rare breed of versatile defender who can stay with the both the fastest and strongest players on the field.

Recognizing him as one of the best players in the country was well warranted.

“It’s an acknowledgement that he’s been at the top of the game for a couple of years and an appreciation for how hard it is,” Corrigan said, “because we play as good a schedule as anyone in the country. He played against all of the very best attackmen, I think, that you’re going to see on the First Team All-American list. He guarded all of them. So people know, anything he’s doing, he’s doing against the best.”

Lyght gets the individual shout out, but the entire team deserves heaps of praise for the position it’s put itself in. Perhaps more than in any of the other years Corrigan has fielded an elite team capable of capturing the sport’s ultimate crown, of which there have been many, Notre Dame has done it as result of a total team effort from the attack, midfield, defense and all the way back to goalie Thomas Ricciardelli, who has the No. 8 save percentage of any netminder in the nation.

The Irish are a big home favorite over Jacksonville to begin the tournament. Things would get tougher against likely second-round opponent Cornell, the No. 7 national seed. No matter who Notre Dame is playing, though, Corrigan just wants his team to be itself. Against any opponent not named Virginia this season (the No. 5 nationally seeded Cavaliers are responsible for both ND losses) that’s been more than enough.

“It’s important that you do play with confidence this time of year because you’re going to play other good teams and they’re going to make plays,” Corrigan said. “You’re not going to just kind of walk through this thing. And so, if you have a team that’s confidence is fragile that you worry about at different times, they can get knocked off balance. So I hope we’re playing with a lot of confidence, but there’s a thin line between confidence and arrogance, too. And we got to make sure we’re riding that on the right side.”