PHILADELPHIA — The Denver men’s lacrosse program restored itself as a national title contender this season.
The Pioneers’ second NCAA tournament championship, however, will have to wait for another year.
The fifth-seeded Pioneers struggled to generate possessions as top-seeded Notre Dame pulled away in the second half for a 13-6 victory in the NCAA semifinals before 32,269 at Lincoln Financial Field.
Richie Connell and Michael Lampert each scored twice, and Malcolm Kleban made nine of his 10 saves in the first half for the Pioneers (13-4), who were denied their second national championship game appearance and first since winning the title in 2015.
“I thought we probably needed to have a perfect game today, and that we did not,” first-year coach Matt Brown said. “But over the course of the 60 minutes, these guys continued to compete like they did all year long. We’re disappointed, as we should be. It’s a big moment.”
Notre Dame’s Will Lynch won 18 of 23 faceoffs for the Fighting Irish (15-1), who will meet Maryland in Monday’s title game.
Given the possession disparity, Denver wasn’t in poor shape after a half. The Pioneers trailed 3-1 after a quarter, but Lampert and Stephen Avery scored in a 90-second span to tie it. While the Irish got the next two, Connell’s goal with 8 seconds left before the break got Denver within 5-4.
Just as importantly, the tempo didn’t get away from Denver, which entered with the nation’s No. 2 scoring defense at 9.19 goals per game. (Notre Dame was fourth coming into the semifinals at 9.4) The Pioneers were well-equipped to play a more methodical game, like their 10-8 defeat of Syracuse in last Sunday’s quarterfinals.
Still, possession tilted heavily toward Notre Dame, and Irish goalie Liam Entenmann (12 saves total, six in each half) was nearly as effective as Kleban in the early going. With so many chances, Notre Dame gradually wore away at the Pioneers’ defense.
Denver was still within a goal at 6-5 when Lampert’s second goal trickled past Entenmann. But the Irish ripped off the next three to close out the third quarter as Eric Dobson assisted on a Devon McLane goal and then scored unassisted less than two minutes later. Chris Kavanagh’s third goal of the day made it 9-5 for the Irish.
Joshua Carlson got one back early in the fourth quarter, but Notre Dame won all six faceoffs in the final period and wisely settled in to work the shot clock almost every time it got the ball in the final 20 minutes.
“When a bunch of great players have the ball for a consistent amount of time, it’s obviously tough to stop them every single time,” Denver long stick midfielder AJ Mercurio said. “Our defense, we put up a damn good fight and made them work for everything that they got.”
Meanwhile, the Pioneers’ offense — which was always predicated on balance more than a singular difference-maker — couldn’t establish a rhythm in the second half as things slipped away.
Denver shot 2 of 18 after the break with eight turnovers and was held scoreless for the final 13:37.
“They made halftime adjustments and we just didn’t adjust to those adjustments well,” Connell said.
It was an anticlimactic conclusion to an otherwise memorable year for the Pioneers. Denver won at Johns Hopkins in its debut under Brown, later picked off Cornell and went 5-0 in the Big East’s regular season.
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More importantly, it reached the semifinals for the sixth time in program history. It was the program’s first time this deep in the tournament since 2017, when it played in its fifth semifinal in a seven-season span.
“We all came back as fifth-years and seniors for a chance at championship weekend, and that’s exactly what we got,” Mercurio said. “We are a gritty, gritty, gritty team. We fought tooth and nail every single game. We had overtime wins. We went against top-10, top-five teams and came out victorious. It was really just getting back to the Pioneer way.”
And for that, Brown — a Denver alum who was the program’s longtime offensive coordinator before succeeding Bill Tierney when he retired from college coaching after last season — is grateful.
“I’m proud of these guys,” Brown said. “They got our program back to where we belong.”
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