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Notre Dame men’s lacrosse upsets Duke, 13-9, to win first NCAA Division I championship

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PHILADELPHIA — With one broad stroke, Notre Dame men’s lacrosse vanquished an archrival and history.

An all-around effort fueled the No. 3 seed Fighting Irish to a 13-9 upset of No. 1 seed Duke in the NCAA Division I Tournament final Monday afternoon before an announced 30,462 at Lincoln Financial Field.

The victory gave Notre Dame (14-2) its first national championship in three finals appearances. The program also ended a run of postseason futility against the Blue Devils, their Atlantic Coast Conference foes.

Duke had defeated the Fighting Irish in the 2010 and 2014 title games — both of which took place at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. Notre Dame had been 1-5 against the Blue Devils in the NCAA Tournament with the last victory occurring in the first round in 1995.

Six players scored two goals each for the Fighting Irish. Two attackmen, senior Jake Taylor and sophomore Chris Kavanagh, racked up two goals and one assist each, and graduate student midfielder Jack Simmons — a Lutherville resident and McDonogh graduate who transferred from Virginia — chipped in one goal and two assists.

Notre Dame's Pat Kavanagh reacts after a goal by Quinn McCahon in the first half of Monday's NCAA Division I Tournament championship game against Duke at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

The key for Notre Dame was a defense that blanketed a Blue Devils offense that had ranked fourth nationally in scoring at 15.2 goals per game. Duke’s nine-goal output was its fewest in a game since a 14-5 loss to Maryland in an NCAA Tournament semifinal on May 29, 2021.

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Senior goalkeeper Liam Entenmann made seven saves in the fourth quarter and 18 for the game. And graduate student defenseman Chris Fake limited Tewaaraton Award finalist and junior attackman Brennan O’Neill to one goal on nine shots, one assist and two turnovers.

O’Neill entered the game ranked second in the nation in points per game (5.4), 12th in assists per game (2.4) and 17th in goals per game (3.0).

The Fighting Irish limited the Blue Devils to only a single goal in the first half. They joined Johns Hopkins in 1977 and 1982, Virginia in 1980 and Cornell in 1988 as teams that had managed just one goal in the first 30 minutes of the title game.

The Fighting Irish are only the fourth team in Division I history to capture the crown after missing the previous NCAA Tournament, joining the 1983 and 2008 Syracuse and 2012 Loyola Maryland squads. In fact, either Notre Dame or Duke would have earned that distinction after both schools had been left out of last year’s postseason.

The Fighting Irish became only the third team in the last 12 years to win the championship after playing in the second of Saturday’s two semifinals. They joined the 2017 and 2022 Maryland squads that triumphed two days after participating in the later semifinals.

Notre Dame and Denver in 2015 are the only teams west of the Mississippi River to collect NCAA Division I crowns in men’s lacrosse.

Notre Dame's Chris Kavanagh celebrates after scoring a goal in the first half of Monday's NCAA Division I Tournament championship game against Duke at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

Graduate student midfielder Garrett Leadmon, an Annapolis resident, led the Blue Devils (16-3) with two goals and one assist, Graduate student goalie William Helm made 10 saves, but Duke fell short of claiming its first national championship since 2014.

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Leadmon gave Duke a 1-0 lead just 35 seconds into the game when he drove the left alley, turned back to the cage and dumped the ball over Entenmann.

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After that, it was all Fighting Irish, who got goals from six players to enjoy a 6-0 run over the final 26:33 of the first half. The burst began with graduate student midfielder Brian Tevlin converting a pass from Kavanagh with the shot clock almost at zero early in the first quarter and ended with graduate student midfielder Quinn McMahon firing the ball from beyond the midfield line into an empty net vacated by Helm to take part in a 10-man ride with 5:27 remaining in the second.

Trailing 6-1 at halftime, the Blue Devils mounted a furious comeback with four consecutive goals in a 3:53 stretch. Even after sophomore attackman Jeffery Ricciardelli converted a pass from Taylor to end a 13:03 drought for Notre Dame, Duke responded with goals from junior midfielder Aidan Danenza and freshman midfielder Charles Balsamo (whose pass ricocheted off short-stick defensive midfielder Ben Ramsey into the net) to tie the score at 7 late in the third quarter.

Notre Dame's Eric Dobsonm, right, high-fives Pat Kavanagh after scoring a goal in the first half.

But the Fighting Irish scored twice in the final 28 seconds of the period. Tic-tac-toe passing between junior midfielder Eric Dobson, senior attackman Pat Kavanagh and Tevlin culminated in Tevlin scoring with 27.3 seconds left. Then Chris Kavanagh curled the left post and used an inside roll against senior long-stick midfielder Tyler Carpenter to give Notre Dame a 9-7 lead with 0.6 seconds remaining.

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The fourth quarter belonged to the Fighting Irish. Dobson’s goal early in the frame capped a 3-0 run over a 4:38 span, and even after graduate student midfielder Owen Caputo’s goal about two minutes later ended a 7:10 drought for the Blue Devils to make the score 10-8, Notre Dame rattled off three consecutive goals in a 1:42 stretch to put the game out of reach.

The announced attendance was the 12th largest to watch a Division I final and the most since 2019 when 31,528 watched Virginia defeat Yale, 13-9, at Lincoln Financial Field.

The three-day crowd of 78,094 was also the biggest since 2019, when 101,544 attended championship weekend.

This story will be updated.



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