The #2 Fighting Irish play the #4 Ohio State Buckeyes this Saturday at 2:00, Arlotta Stadium, ESPN3. Another top 5 matchup for the 4-1 Irish.  Now that women’s hoops has dusted off the Buckeyes, let’s hope men’s lacrosse can do the same.

  • Ohio State has surprised the nation and enters this game with a perfect 9-0 record.  Folks were initially skeptical as the Buckeyes built their record pounding on developing squads and had an abysmal strength of schedule.  However, last week they beat a ranked Towson and then destroyed the then-#1 Denver Pioneers, the only team to have beaten Notre Dame this year, showing they are a legitimate force.
  • There may not be any Canadians left in Canada, as Ohio State has more than a handful on their roster.  Among them are their scoring leaders seniors Eric Fannell and Johnny Pearson, and freshman Tre LeClaire, as well as excellent faceoff specialist Jake Withers.
  • Ohio State and Notre Dame have played each other 41 times, with Notre Dame winning the last 14 games on the trot.  Last year’s game was an 9-8 Irish win with the Notre Dame playing uninspired lacrosse.  The 2015 contest led to a rare lacrosse shutout, with the Irish on top 9-0 (notably, the Buckeyes were coming off a win over Denver that time, too).

Games against ranked opponents at Arlotta Stadium are must-see television, with nearly all of them being decided by one goal, such as 2016’s Virginia, Denver and Marquette, and 2015 North Carolina and Syracuse.

We’ll give the Sergio watch the week off, so for this matchup there will be the following questions:

  1. Faceoffs, faceoffs, faceoffs:  Ohio State’s Jake Withers is winning draws at an excellent 64%.  P.J Finley and his crew will have their hands full, but need to find a way to keep possessions relatively even.  The past two weeks have been very tough days at the office at faceoff X.
  2. Force Buckeyes to dodge:  Against Denver, Ohio State assisted a whopping 14 of 16 goals.  As noted above, much of the Buckeyes scoring comes from Canadian players, whose style is traditionally one-handed.  Allowing them to cut and pass unhindered plays to this strength.  They should be much more manageable to defend one-on-one.  They have some size, but ND seems to match up well in these situations.
  3. Force Buckeyes to slide:  One very noticeable thing in the Ohio State/Denver game is that the Buckeye defenders each took care of their own business and need very little sliding help.  This was impressive.  Notre Dame has to force the issue and make Ohio State double team.  This will put a lot of pressure on Garnsey, Pierre “the silent assassin” Byrne and Perkovic to force the issue and open up the defense.

Another excellent game is expected, with the season playing out as hoped:  the Irish are taking on only the best of the best.  If we had to guess, the defenses will shine tomorrow.

Irish -2, o/u 17 for those interested in that kind of thing.

Of course, it would be rude of us not to include the Ryder Garnsey celly remix:


#GoIrish