{"id":787844,"date":"2026-05-11T02:44:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T02:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/787844\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T02:44:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T02:44:02","slug":"notre-dame-starts-slow-catches-fire-in-ncaa-tournament-win-over-jacksonville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/787844\/","title":{"rendered":"Notre Dame starts slow, catches fire in NCAA Tournament win over Jacksonville"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacksonville had Notre Dame on its heels for half a quarter. Shot after shot, chance after chance, scare for the Fighting Irish home crowd after scare for the Fighting Irish home crowd. Just about everything going JU\u2019s way. <\/p>\n

Except for goal scoring. <\/p>\n

In spite of an immense and rather impressive spurt of pressure, it was ultimately empty possession after empty possession and nothing doing for the Dolphins. It came back to bite them. Eventually, the Irish were doing all of the attacking. Taking all of the shots. Accumulating all of the chances. Giving the home crowd at Arlotta Stadium on Mother\u2019s Day reasons to get on their feet and get loud. <\/p>\n

It took a stern talking to during an early timeout from head coach Kevin Corrigan<\/strong>, but Notre Dame eventually led by four at the end of a first quarter in which Jacksonville had the Irish right where it wanted them, and that was demoralizing enough for the Dolphins to nose dive and never truly give the No. 2 national seed any reasons to fear it was on the verge of being upset. <\/p>\n

Notre Dame won, 18-5, to ease into the second round of the NCAA Tournament. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey wanted to try to turn the tempo up on us, so we said, hey, we\u2019re not going to get into a crazy back and forth, but if we have chances and they create some transition for us, let\u2019s attack it and try to make hay while we can,\u201d Corrigan said. \u201cSo we did.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Irish (11-2) were led by 5 goals from sophomore Luke Miller<\/strong>. His first came with 2:50 to go in the first quarter. By then, the Irish had gone up 3-0. Freshman Teddy Lally<\/strong> got the scoring started with 6:41 remaining in the first. Those are two of the most usual scoring suspects for the Irish. Matt Jeffery<\/strong> and Brock Behrman <\/strong>are two others who fit in that category, and they both had 2 goals apiece. Lally had a hat trick. <\/p>\n

As prominent as Notre Dame\u2019s top producers were, the Irish\u2019s domination was defined by the contributions from all over the lineup. Senior Thomas Porell<\/strong>, who\u2019s been around since the national championship seasons of 2023 and 2024, scored his first career goal to put the Irish ahead 2-0. At halftime, when it was 9-1, the Irish registered 8 assists from seven different players. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s awesome,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe love to see a number of guys put the ball in the back of the net or make a great assist or play.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Corrigan told reporters<\/a><\/strong> two days before the start of his team\u2019s postseason run rang true in the first game of the tournament \u2014 this is a Notre Dame squad that has dangerous offensive threats all over. Everyone was in on the act. Jacksonville, which went into the matchup with the second-best scoring defense in the country, found out the hard way and was lit up for well over the 7.38 goals against per game it averaged prior to this weekend\u2019s trip to South Bend. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s who we are; more than anything else this year, we\u2019ve said we\u2019re a really good defensive team who relies on a lot of different people to be able to make plays at both ends of the field,\u201d Corrigan said. \u201cThat\u2019s not a bad thing to be at this time of the year. Everybody else has good players, and you don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to have a bad matchup or anything else. So it\u2019s nice to not be so reliant on one or two guys.\u201d <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a crease issue for Jacksonville. Once Notre Dame got going, Dolphins goalie Ryan Della Rocco <\/strong>was under siege. He faced 54 Irish shots, 31 of which found their way on his net. He saved 13 of those. Notre Dame\u2019s Thomas Ricciardelli<\/strong>, meanwhile, made 16 saves. He won the battle of two of the nation\u2019s best netminders, which was another death knell for the Dolphins. They couldn\u2019t afford to get goalie\u2019d in a game they were already behind in as far as offensive output went aside from the first seven or so minutes of the match. <\/p>\n

Ricciardelli bounced back from allowing 15 goals and only making 7 saves in an ACC Tournament loss to Virginia last weekend. He found himself again Sunday. Corrigan said Ricciardelli\u2019s \u201cshort memory\u201d helped him turn in his masterful performance. Ricciardelli confirmed his coach\u2019s assertion. <\/p>\n

\u201cI lost a little bit of confidence in that game in terms of where I was and how I was doing,\u201d he said. \u201cBut just looking back and talking to other people, they were just like, put your head down [and get back at it]. I\u2019m good enough to be here. That\u2019s kind of the thoughts I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a thorough dispatching of the Dolphins in the first NCAA Tournament appearance in their program\u2019s history, a quarterfinals head-to-head against Johns Hopkins, which knocked off No. 7 national seed Cornell 9-8 in overtime yesterday, awaits Notre Dame at James M. Shuart Stadium in Hempstead, N.Y., this Saturday, May 16. The Blue Jays are 10-5.<\/p>\n

The Irish are one win away from another appearance in the national semifinals and three wins away from their third national championship in the last four seasons. Every opponent presents different challenges and every match in a tournament comes with new obstacles to conquer, but if Notre Dame plays the way it did in the final 50 minutes Sunday the rest of the way everything is on the table for Corrigan\u2019s crew. <\/p>\n

Especially now that the semester is over and it\u2019s all lacrosse from here on out. No more school duties to attend to. It\u2019s just about winning three more times. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat was as good of a performance as I can remember us having coming out of exams like that,\u201d Corrigan said. \u201cJust in terms of how clean we were, our ball handling. A lot of good little things we did well today. So I was really happy with today.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville had Notre Dame on its heels for half a quarter. Shot after shot, chance after chance, scare…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":787845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-787844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116553650411772391","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}