Lacrosse Blogs

Before the game, many fans I spoke to talked about how Duke’s offense was just so powerful and that Notre Dame would be lucky to even hang in the game. It was tiresome to keep reminding everyone that Notre Dame actually beat Duke early in the season by 4. 

I’ve heard the excuses that Duke was in a slump early in the season. In their first 5 games they almost lost to Bucknell as the Bison took them to overtime. Then lost to Notre Dame, beat Penn, and then lost to Maryland and North Carolina. Duke averaged 10.4 goals per game. For the rest of the season Duke averaged 15.2 goals per game.

Notre Dame has been streaky, winning against Duke and Loyola, but losing to Drexel, Fairfield, Ruters, Villanova, and Georgetown. Notre Dame has beaten Princeton, Maryland, Cornell, with authority.

Coach John Danowski has slayed his demons and won his first national championship. It is not only redemption for Danowski, but also for 8 fifth year seniors at Duke.

In one of the lowest scoring games in NCAA history, Duke won a defensive battle.

Duke took many shots on Scott Rodgers and forced him to make many tough saves (15 saves, 6 goals against). On the other side of the field Notre Dame took many shots.  Unfortunately most missed the cage. If they had come closer we may have seen a different outcome as Wigrizer only made 5 saves off 10 shots on goal. Notre Dame took a total of 31 shots. That means only 10 of 31 shots were on goal. If you have the opportunity to play against a freshman goalie in the championship, you NEED to take better shots.  Statistically though, if Notre Dame had taken 4 more shots on goal they would have won.

It was a tough battle as both teams were fairly evenly matched in ground balls (Duke-26, ND-22) and face-offs (Duke 8/15, ND 7/15). It came down to the overtime and CJ Constabile took the opening face-off ran straight for the cage shooting it past Rodgers.  It was the shortest overtime in NCAA Championships history. You gotta love when a pole wins the national championship.

Congrats to Duke’s coach Danowski and their fifth year seniors for the win.