UVA lacrosse drops stunner to Notre Dame in NCAA Semifinals after leading in the final minute

With 3:29 left in regulation, the Virginia Cavaliers men’s lacrosse team was leading the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 11-9 with the ball. A Griffin Schutz dodge to the cage while the offense was still substituting generated a good shot, but goalie Liam Entenmann made the necessary stop and sent the ball the other way.

Notre Dame called timeout after the successful clear and midfielder Eric Dobson swept across the top of the field and fed attackman Chris Kavanagh on the crease to pull back within one. The Irish then won the face-off and Dobson found the back of the net 30 seconds later.

Petey LaSalla won the ensuing face-off, Connor Shellenberger caught a high Payton Cormier shot late in the shot clock and fed Thomas McConvey on the crease to put the Wahoos back up by one with just 52 seconds remaining. At that point, with college lacrosse’s 80 second shot-clock, UVA was seemingly just one face-off win away from another National Championship game appearance.

Alas, the Virginia offense didn’t see the ball again. Notre Dame’s face-off win via Will Lynch gave the Irish a chance, and another timeout from Head Coach Kevin Corrigan resulted in a stunning twister goal from Jake Taylor to tie the game with 32 seconds on the clock. The Fighting Irish had another chance to get a shot off after an extended scrum after the draw, but failed to do so, sending the game to overtime.

LaSalla seemingly won the clamp of the overtime face-off and had a shot at the ground ball. But Notre Dame managed to prevent him from winning the possession and proceeded to call their third timeout in 3:21 of game play. Just as the first two resulted in scores, so did the third. Brian Tevlin dodged and dodged to score, sweeping across the middle of the field and bouncing the ball past Matthew Nunes to send the Cavaliers home.

In the loss, Connor Shellenberger (three goals, three assists) and Nunes (17 saves on 30 saves, 56.7%) were the stars.

We’ll have further analysis of this loss and what it means for UVA’s program moving forward shortly.