No. 5 Virginia lacrosse comes up short against No. 1 Notre Dame (2024)

CHARLOTTESVILLE – A year ago, with a spot in the national championship game on the line, Virginia lacrosse gave up a two-goal lead with under three minutes to play against Notre Dame and lost.

Saturday, in the first meeting between the powerhouse programs since, the top-ranked Fighting Irish erased another late deficit, scoring the game’s final three goals in a ferocious and frenetic fourth quarter, winning 11-9 and handing UVa its third straight loss.

Did the No. 5 Cavaliers rattle with the game on the line?

“If unforced turnovers are lack of poise, yeah,” Virginia coach Lars Tiffany said. “And I haven’t seen that from Virginia teams. But when I’m looking at the stats and it’s 16-3 in ground balls, 12-2 in shots, 5-0 at the faceoff X, all in favor of Notre Dame, in the fourth quarter, yeah, it looks like, where’s the poise? Where’s that confidence?”

In front of 6,497, the largest crowd to pack Klockner Stadium in 11 years, poise and confidence were wearing Notre Dame jerseys.

Devon McClane scored three goals, including one that sealed the Irish win with 3:41 to play.

“We compete. We don’t flinch,” Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan said. “But I thought we had played better than the scoreboard showed up until that point. We were waiting for the ball to start going in a little bit.”

Virginia senior attackman Connor Shellenberger compared the 11 months since the Final Four loss to the Irish to living with “a nightmare.” Shellenberger and the Cavaliers won’t have to wait as long for a rematch this time.

The two national title contenders will meet Friday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the conference tournament semifinals, a victory Virginia (10-4, 1-3 ACC) might need to secure a home game in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

In their final regular-season games at Klockner Stadium, UVa’s Payton Cormier scored four times and Shellenberger added a goal and two assists.

Notre Dame (10-1, 4-0) threw a complex defensive strategy at Shellenberger, faking slides to him and leaving in limbo between passing and attacking the goal.

A Virginia defense that suffered breakdown after breakdown in last weekend’s road loss at Syracuse harassed and hounded the potent Irish attack all afternoon. Senior defenseman Cole Kastner held Notre Dame star Pat Cavanaugh to two goals and two assists on just four shots.

Two weeks after being pulled after allowing goals on the first seven shots he saw at Duke, goaltender Matthews Nunes was back in star form, making 10 saves.

All of that helped keep UVa in the game. Seven fourth-quarter turnovers and five faceoff losses in the period kept the Cavaliers from the victory.

“We were just turning the ball over,” Kastner said. “Gave them more opportunities than we gave our offense. We’re so confident in our offense that they’re going to score and put it away. That’s on us for not getting the ball in the places it needed to be.”

Virginia committed 27 turnovers on the day and failed on eight clears. Notre Dame won groundballs 50-26.

UVa led 6-4 at the half, the defense impressively stifling the ACC’s top offense. Nunes stopped eight shots in the first two quarters.

The Cavaliers went up 7-4 before things swung in the third quarter. With a penalty coming against Virginia, Notre Dame got a Max Busenkell goal to trim the deficit to 7-6. UVa then gave up the man-down goal and fell behind 8-7 on a goal from Andrew Greenspan with 2:59 left in the period, the fourth straight score for the Irish.

Cormier’s fourth goal of the day, a man-up tally, evened things up at 8 going to the final quarter.

Ryan Colsey gave UVa 9-8 lead after whipping a shot past Notre Dame All-American goalie Lian Entemann 2:08 into the fourth quarter.

But Virginia game unglued down the stretch, Notre Dame scored the final three goals, and Round 1 of what could be another trilogy went to the Irish.