NCAA Rewind: Never a Doubt with Notre Dame

Before USA Lacrosse Magazine looks ahead to what’s to come in 2025 — look out for our NCAA Way-Too-Early Top 25 rankings later this summer — our team of staff and contributors decided it was worth taking a last look at the 2024 college lacrosse season.

To do that, we’re taking a journey through 30 of the top teams in men’s and women’s lacrosse to see what went right, what went wrong and how we should feel about the season.

NOTRE DAME

USA Lacrosse preseason/final ranking: No. 1/No. 1
2024 record: 16-1 (4-0 ACC)

What went right: The Fighting Irish repeated as national champions, becoming the first team since 1990 Syracuse to win each of its tournament games by at least five goals. 

Pat Kavanagh (31 G, 49 A) won the program’s first Tewaaraton Award. Chris Kavanagh (44 G, 37 A) turned in a monster postseason to cap a breakout year. Will Lynch parlayed an impressive 2023 tournament into a stellar year, shoring up one of the Irish’s few question marks from the year before. 

Notre Dame had the depth, talent and possessions to run three midfields, a trait that paid off handsomely on many occasions but especially on short turnarounds in the ACC and national title games. 

Goalie Liam Entenmann capped a stellar career by stopping 57 percent of the shots on cage.

What went wrong: Other than losing an overtime toss-up game to Georgetown in late February? Not much. 

This was a team that led the country in scoring offense and scoring defense, not to mention man-up offense and shooting percentage. The gap between the Irish and the rest of the country was more like a canyon.

Season highlight: Making quick work of Maryland on Memorial Day, a 15-5 rout that made Notre Dame the first team to win the tournament in back-to-back years since 2013-14 Duke.

Verdict: Notre Dame had some vulnerable moments in April — at Duke, against Cornell on Long Island, at Virginia in the regular-season finale. Not in May. The Fighting Irish won their last six games (two in the ACC tournament, four in the NCAA tournament) by an average of 7.7 goals. Notre Dame was a no-doubt-about-it champion that saved its best for last.