PHILADELPHIA — Charged with trying to derail the juggernaut in men’s lacrosse this spring, Maryland’s bid to play roadblock devolved into being more of a speed bump.
Defying a scheduled start delayed by inclement weather, the No. 7 seed Terps raced to an early two-goal lead but couldn’t keep up with top-seeded Notre Dame, which confirmed its reputation as the season’s most imposing team and captured its second consecutive national championship with a 15-5 thrashing in the NCAA Tournament final Monday afternoon before an announced 31,479 at Lincoln Financial Field.
The crowd was the largest for the title game since 2019 when 31,528 watched Virginia outlast Yale 13-9, also at Lincoln Financial Field. The attendance for the three-day championship weekend was 80,898.
Senior midfielder Eric Malever totaled one goal and two assists, but Maryland (11-6) fell well short of its first NCAA title since 2022 and fifth overall. The program dropped to 4-13 in the tournament final overall and 2-6 under coach John Tillman.
The Irish (16-1) wrapped up their season on a 14-game winning streak that began with a 14-9 victory over the Terps on March 3. Notre Dame, which had not lost since Feb. 25 when Georgetown pulled off an 11-10 overtime stunner in South Bend, Indiana, became the seventh team to repeat as national champions, joining Johns Hopkins in 1978-79 and 1984-85, Syracuse in 1988-89 and 2008-09, Princeton in 1996-98 and Duke in 2013-14.
Senior attackman Chris Kavanagh scored five goals and graduate student attackman and older brother Pat forged a game-high six points, all on assists, for Notre Dame, which scored at least 10 goals in every contest this spring. Pat Kavanagh broke the school’s NCAA Tournament single-game record for assists while Chris tied the mark in goals.
Despite a 17-for-24, six-ground ball performance by graduate student faceoff specialist Luke Wierman, Maryland had few remedies for Notre Dame’s relentless play in seemingly every facet. The Terps scored the fewest goals in a title game since 2015 when they dropped a 10-5 decision to Denver, committed 11 of their 16 turnovers by midway through the second quarter, went almost 20 minutes in the first half without a goal, and didn’t get a save from graduate student goalkeeper Logan McNaney until 93 seconds had elapsed in the third quarter.
Although McNaney stopped 10 shots, his early struggles were a drastic departure from his Irish counterpart Liam Entenmann, the graduate student who rebounded from giving up two quick goals to finish with 16 saves. And as effective as the Kavanagh brothers were, the offense got a significant lift from its second midfield of sophomore Max Busenkell (one goal and two assists), junior Will Angrick (one goal and one assist) and graduate student Reilly Gray (one goal).
Those contributions, as well as goals from juniors Jalen Seymour and Fisher Finley of the third midfield line, propelled Notre Dame despite appearing to mirror a long weather delay that pushed the game’s start time from noon to 2:10 p.m. The time had been adjusted Sunday afternoon from its original schedule of 1 p.m. in anticipation of severe thunderstorms and lightning.
The delay did not seem to affect Maryland, which got a goal from senior midfielder Ryan Siracusa off a pass by Malever just 34 seconds into the game. Siracusa returned the favor by giving the ball to senior attackman Daniel Kelly (Calvert Hall) for a rip from the high slot that extended the team’s lead to 2-0 less than four minutes in.
Notre Dame shook off any lethargy when Angrick collected a feed from Busenkell and scored from the slot a minute later. And less than a minute after that, the Irish pounced on a breakdown by the Terps defense that left graduate student attackman Jake Taylor wide-open in the slot to receive a pass from Pat Kavanagh and score.
Busenkell gave Notre Dame its first lead of the afternoon with a well-placed shot from a sharp angle left of the cage to the top right corner of the net midway through the high-scoring first frame. But Maryland evened the score at 3 just 11 seconds later when senior midfielder Jack Koras caught a pass from graduate student attackman Daniel Maltz and fired a jump shot from the left point.
That’s when the Irish imposed their will. They scored seven straight goals over a 17:40 stretch bridging the first two quarters. The run included three consecutive goals by Chris Kavanagh and three assists by Pat Kavanagh.
Malever ended a 19:51 Terps scoring drought when he converted a skip pass by Koras for an extra-man goal with 1:15 left in the second quarter. Even that tally had to withstand a challenge by Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan that was eventually denied by officials before Maryland players and fans could release a sigh of relief.
Armed with a 10-4 lead, the Irish opened the third quarter with three straight goals — including two by Chris Kavanagh — to extinguish any hopes of a Terps comeback.
