#20 Men's Lacrosse Hosts #2 ND, 1PM Today (on BTN+)
Michigan men's lacrosse gets the chance to ruin the Fighting Irish's St. Patrick's Day Weekend when they take on their rivals, #2-ranked Notre Dame at 1PM today. The game will be at the State Street facility and streamed on BTN+ (annoying). Looks like it won't get out of the 20s today in Ann Arbor, but if you want to get some fresh air before watching the tournament all day, go down and check it out. Should be a good game.
Michigan is playing well and coming off two strong wins over 2022 tournament teams Delaware and Harvard. In both games, they used big runs in the middle portion of the game to overcome slow starts and then take comfortable leads. It appears the attack is clicking, faceoff man Rowlett is firing on all cylinders and veteran goalie Shane Carr is back in the groove once again. They'll all need big games today to pull the upset.
A Michigan victory today would be absolutely HUGE for their NCAA tournament chances. It's their last non-con game before B1G play starts and Hopkins comes to town. A win today and two conference wins could get them into the NCAAs. They also could catch ND looking ahead to their #1 vs. #2 matchup vs. Virginia next week.
This could be the best Notre Dame outfit in years and they could be the team that takes home the program's first national title. They're 5-0 and just laid a 16-3 beatdown of Ohio State (weird score) and before that got a triple overtime win over Maryland. But no matter how good they are, I always find that Kevin Corrigan's ND teams are always vulnerable to a letdown. They're powered by the Kavanaugh brothers, two tiny jitterbug types from Coach Conry's hometown on Long Island and whose older brother Pat was the best player in ND program history. They will be a handful to contain for Michigan's defense. Michigan will have to play physical and make sure their slides are timely and effective to make life easier for Carr. And maybe hope the cold slows down the Irish a little.
If this Michigan team can bring that same effort they've been playing with lately, this game could be very interesting. GO GET 'EM AND GO BLUE!!! BEAT ND!!!
March 18th, 2023 at 11:25 AM ^
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll be watching them.
March 18th, 2023 at 11:38 AM ^
18 degrees with winds gusting to some god awful number. Why do I sign up for this torture?!? To hell with Notre Dame.l!
edit: sorry 21 degrees- my eyes are so frozen I looked st the date not the temp.
March 18th, 2023 at 11:53 AM ^
The cold is one thing...but the wind is the pits.
March 18th, 2023 at 12:44 PM ^
Go Blue!
I’m thinking of the last time ND’s football team visited A2. Let’s hope for a similar result today.
March 18th, 2023 at 12:58 PM ^
It's too bad the B1G gymnastics championships are today because I was hoping this game might've snuck onto BTN. Aside from Virginia-Maryland which is the marquis game, this is one of the more intriguing and high profile matchups of the week. But unfortunately, it's on BTN Ocho; would love to watch.
OUch it's 9-2 ND at half. And Michigan is 10/13(!) on faceoffs. So, I'm not sure what's going on. But they'll definitely need that patented mid-game run to get back in this one. Hopefully they can make the needed adjustments at halftime. But if they're winning FOs at that kind of clip, this one isn't quite out of reach yet. They just need to get good shots and finish. GO BLUE.
...aaaand they got crushed, 18-8. Guess ND was as good as advertised. From the highlights I saw, ND was very quick and they played really tight and together as an offensive unit. But, it also looked like Michigan gave up plenty of cheap/soft ones, esp towards the end. Looked like ND got a bunch of goals on M miscommunications and poor slides and M got caught ball-watching on a number of those. It seemed like almost every goal came in in the half-field/6-on-6, which is not a good sign.
But, they weren't supposed to win this one anyway, so they can just learn from it and put it behind them and get ready for conference play. All of M's B1G foes are ranked in the top 20, which means that the #s 1,2,4,5,6,10 and 14-ranked teams are all on Michigan's schedule this year. The conference is strong but they'll have good chances to score quality Ws over Penn State, Ohio State and Hopkins, especially and that starts next week. GO BLUE.