Notre Dame lacrosse dominates top-ranked North Carolina
· Yahoo Sports
SOUTH BEND — At least for the time being, order has been restored atop the men’s lacrosse world.
Notre Dame made sure of that with a 10-5 win over top-ranked North Carolina on Saturday evening, April 11 at Arlotta Stadium.
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With an overflow crowd of 5,000 in attendance, including dozens of Notre Dame football players and coaches, the second-ranked Irish (8-1) knocked off No. 1 for a second straight weekend. Last time out, the Irish ended upstart Richmond’s brief stay atop the polls with a 12-8 win on neutral turf in Evanston, Ill.
“Our goal isn’t to be No. 1 in the beginning of April,” senior goaltender Thomas Ricciardelli said. “It’s to be the last team standing come Memorial Day. We know our end goal. … Our best lacrosse has to happen in May.”
Knocked out in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals last year by Penn State after claiming back-to-back national titles, coach Kevin Corrigan’s perennial power improved to 7-1 since 2015 against top-ranked competition.
“Don’t tell me things like that,” Corrigan said with a laugh. “I don’t want to know things like that.”
His locker-room speech before facing No. 1 teams must be a doozy.
“We talked a lot about Sun Tzu this week,” Corrigan said of the famed Chinese general. “We were introducing the guys to Sun Tzu. There’s only one guy that knew who he was, and that was (Josh) Yago."
The Air Force Academy grad transfer, who led the way with three assists, knows a thing or two about “The Art of War.”
“Not surprisingly, the military guy,” Corrigan said after this Military Appreciation Game.
How Notre Dame shut down North Carolina's high-scoring duo
North Carolina (10-2), winless in 10 trips to Notre Dame since 2004, wasted a 2-0 lead after one period on a pair of man-up goals.
The Tar Heels retied the game at 4-all just 12 seconds into the second half, then went dormant against Ricciardelli (15 saves) and a stout Irish back line of Shawn Lyght, Nate Schwitzenberg and Will Gallagher.
Owen Duffy and Dominic Pietramala, who entered with 55 goals as a duo this year, were harassed into a combined 2-of-15 shooting day. Sophomore attackman Luke Miller, meanwhile, netted half of his six shots in posting his fourth hat trick of the season.
Faceoff specialist Tyler Spano, the Washington & Lee transfer, took 10 of 17 draws in his showdown with Brady Wambach, nephew of U.S. women’s soccer legend Abby Wambach.
The UNC faceoff man, a first-team All-American last season, came in leading the nation in faceoff win percentage (71%) and ranked third among active Division 1 players with 560 career faceoff wins.
“It’s funny, this week everybody wanted to know, ‘What are you going to do about Wambach?’“ Corrigan said. “And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, what do you do about any faceoff guy?’ It’s a matchup, and you never know how it’s going to work out. Some guys have other guys’ numbers, and it’s just crazy like that.”
Spano, who went 16-of-22 on faceoffs against Richmond, credited Irish grad assistant Will Lynch, who handled the job the past two seasons, with getting him ready for Wambach.
“We were more than prepared,” Spano said. “We watched a lot of film. We really understood his tendencies. We knew what we had to do coming out here.”
Named the Division III faceoff player of the year in 2025, Spano went just 10-of-21 in the March 28 loss at Virginia back in his hometown of Charlottesville. He had been splitting faceoff chores with freshman Aidan Diaz-Matos until the latter was sidelined last month.
“When you have two guys splitting (time), you have to just always be ready and you never know who’s going to be taking the next one,” Spano said. “Sometimes it’s easier to get in a rhythm when it’s just one guy, but we’re typically a faceoff by committee.”
As a postgame celebration swirled around him, Corrigan agreed with the notion of a wide-open race for this year’s NCAA crown.
“What you’ve seen is what the year is,” he said. “I don’t think it’s an anomaly what’s happened. There’s a lot of good teams. There may not be a great team or a team that’s become great yet, but there’s a lot of good teams and they can all beat each other.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame lacrosse knocks off another No. 1 team in North Carolina