Ahead of the Irish’s first round matchup against Marquette on Sunday at noon (ESPNU), we had the pleasure of speaking with Brewtown Andy of AnonymousEagle.com , the Marquette sports supersite (twitter: @brewtownandy).  The Golden Eagles have won the Big East title for the second year in a row, and in only their 5th year as a Division 1 program.  Joe Amplo’s team has done this by doing something Notre Dame has had great difficulty accomplishing:  beating Denver.  If you don’t know about the Marquette Lacrosse success story, you need to read Brewtown Andy’s stuff more often.

To the questions!

ND-Atl:        With the big game coming up this weekend, it has not gone unnoticed that your university is organizing fan buses for the trip to South Bend and that there seems to be good energy for this team on campus.  How well has this year’s squad been received as compared to the famous 2016 senior class led by current MLL stud B.J. Grill of the Denver Outlaws and Liam Byrnes?

Brewtown Andy: It’s kind of a weird deal, to be honest.  It feels like the shaky start to the 2017 season, specifically the offensive meltdowns against Richmond and Ohio State kind of took the air out of the excitement that may have been carrying over from 2016.  The loss at Villanova midway through the season pretty much meant that MU had to get wins against Notre Dame/Duke/Denver in order to get an at-large bid, and it was hard for anyone to take that seriously since last year’s Big East title game is the only win in program history against any of those three teams.

So overall enthusiasm seemed to be down from there on out, but that didn’t dampen attendance.  The Duke and Denver home games both drew over 1600 paid which ended up boosting Marquette’s average attendance to a reasonable comparison to the 2016 numbers, and that’s with three games being played in the limited capacity bubble dome on campus.

With all of that said, emotions were definitely running high after beating the Pioneers in the conference semifinals, and I’d imagine that the crowd supporting Marquette at Arlotta on Sunday will be incredibly boisterous.

ND-Atl:        It’s no secret we are huge fans of Marquette coach Joe Amplo.  The Golden Eagles beat Denver on the Big East semifinal after having, as you put it, gotten “smoked” by the Pioneers the immediately prior game, 16-8.  Is any part of the improved performance attributable to Joe Amplo giving Denver hall-of-fame coach Tierney the rope-a-dope in the season ender in anticipation of the upcoming, and more important semifinal?  It seemed to us Marquette utilized a much different defensive strategy in the latter that choked Denver early and way more effectively.

Brewtown Andy: As a relative newcomer to lacrosse, I’m still getting the hang of strategy, defensive assignments, and the like.  So, I can’t say it was rope-a-dope, and I doubt that Amplo was easing back just to throw the Pioneers off, considering a regular season win over Denver would have been a huge deal for the program.

Here’s what I can say, though: While Marquette won both the 2016 and 2017 Big East tournaments, the Golden Eagles went 1-3 in the regular season against the teams they played in the postseason.  That includes losing 14-11 to Denver in the 2016 regular season finale before turning around and knocking off the Pios in the title game a week later.  I feel like it can’t be a coincidence that Amplo and his staff are figuring out a way to counter teams when given a second crack at them in the postseason.  That should probably be troubling for Notre Dame fans, especially after the pair of one-goal games in the past two seasons.

ND-Atl 2.0:    The big mystery for Sunday is the condition of Sergio Perkovic and Ryder Garnsey (Sergio having scored 6 goals in the regular season  ND-Marquette game).  In the ACC tournament, Corrigan played both injured players, using them largely as decoys.  Duke fell for it, UNC largely did not.  With two extra weeks of rest for these guys, how does Marquette handle this?  Two weeks ago, Duke wasted poles and slides on these two which opened up the field.  However, if these two  are closer to 100% than 75%, not poling them will be a disaster for Marquette.

Brewtown Andy: The good news for Joe Amplo and defensive coordinator Jake Richard is that they’re familiar with Kevin Corrigan’s system, having played Notre Dame each of the last five years.  The double bonus here is that Marquette has familiarity with both Duke and North Carolina as well.  MU has played a non-conference game against Duke each of the five years of lacrosse in Milwaukee, so that should help Amplo and Richard identify what was and wasn’t working for the Blue Devils.  It also helps that Amplo played for and coached with John Danowski at Hofstra, so it wouldn’t be particularly surprising to find out that Amplo picked up the phone to his mentor for a tip or three.  The Golden Eagles tangled with the Tar Heels in the NCAA tournament last year, so that relative experience should help find things in the game tape that worked for UNC against the Irish.

Of course, if Perkovic is healthy, we already saw him go bananas against MU this season, so who knows how they’ll figure out how to shut him down.

ND-Atl 2.0:    We love Marquette’s balanced scoring with McNamara, Thomson, Dunn, DeMichei and Wagner.  Who should we look for this weekend to provide extra output if the Irish defense keys on these guys, particularly McNamara?

Brewtown Andy: Grant Preisler is the name to keep in the front of your mind.  The senior from Washington State had a total of seven career points (6G, 1A) coming into this season, and had five goals and two assists in the 2017 regular season.  However, if it wasn’t for Cole Blazer constructing a scale model of The Great Wall Of China in front of his net in the Big East tournament, Preisler might have come away with Most Outstanding Player honors.  He had seven points in the Big East tournament alone, scoring twice against both Denver and Providence and dishing out three total assists, too.  If Preisler can maintain that threat level against Notre Dame, it could tip the game in Marquette’s favor just by lessening the defensive pressure on the guys you mentioned.

ND-Atl:      Last year’s senior class was beyond impressive, and Marquette had a lot to replace this year.  It seemed they struggled for stretches this season, but finished strong and are Big East champions yet again.  How much of the end-of-season success would you attribute to organic improvement over the season as opposed to simply having nothing to lose?

Brewtown Andy: I don’t know if improvement is necessarily the right word, but I think cohesion might be more accurate.  You mentioned BJ Grill and Liam Byrnes earlier, and Marquette has had to replace those two All-Americans this season.  It was going to take a while to get Nick Grill (yes, BJ’s younger brother) and JUCO transfer Jackson Ehlert up to speed with Nick Eufrasio and Cole Blazer on defense even with BJ (he’s MU’s Director of Operations now) and former defensive middie Jake Richard on the sidelines for MU.  Yes, MU went on a tumble towards the end of the season in terms of results, but a one-goal loss to Notre Dame and a four-goal loss to Duke isn’t exactly reason to panic, y’know?

The offense went through some growing pains, as it appears losing Conor Gately to graduation had a bigger impact than I expected.  Ryan McNamara has shifted back to playing midfield with John Wagner taking his place on attack, while Grant Preisler has stepped up to take Kyran Clarke’s starting attackman job late in the season.  Again, this isn’t necessarily improvement, but more just Amplo and the coaching staff figuring out how to put the puzzle pieces together to optimize the team’s performance.

I also think Amplo has a unique way of coaching his team when it comes to the psychological end of things.  If you watch the Marquette student media film “Lucky To Win A Game,” or Amplo’s press conference from after last year’s NCAA loss to North Carolina, the guy clearly has a way of connecting with his players and freeing them to believe in themselves and play as well and as hard as they can.  That kind of thing can have a big impact on a team that I thought was a good team that played a very tough schedule and took some slightly unfortunate losses earlier in the season.

ND-Atl:        We won’t ask you to predict an outcome.  Most expect this to be another close game for these teams, and we feel the same way.  However, if you suspect otherwise, we invite you to let us know why.

Brewtown Andy: I’ll go so far as to say that Marquette/Notre Dame will be the best game of the first round of the tournament.  We got an overtime game in 2016 and a game-winner with 23 seconds left in the 2017 regular season.  Even the 2014 game was a thrill ride, as the 12-7 margin is not wholly indicative of how tightly that game was contested.  Somehow, the strengths and weaknesses of Joe Amplo’s style and system seem to lock in perfectly to the strengths and weaknesses of Kevin Corrigan’s  system, and thus the Golden Eagles and Fighting Irish manage to turn in some highly competitive contests.  There’s no reason to not expect that to happen again this time around.

 

Many thanks to Brewtown Andy for joining us.  Please find him at AnonymousEagle.com, were you may also find our thoughts on Sunday’s matchup facing the questions of the Marquette faithful!

#GoIrish