Entenmann became the third goalie in the last four tournaments to earn most outstanding player honors, joining Virginia’s Alex Rode (2019) and Maryland’s Logan McNaney (2022). He is also the second Notre Dame player to win the honor, joining goalie Scott Rodgers (2010).
Tevlin, Chris Kavanagh, midfielder Eric Dobson and defenseman Chris Fake joined Entenmann as Notre Dame’s representatives on the all-tournament team. But the title was earned in fitting fashion for the Irish, who had six players post multi-goal games in the final.
The work of faceoff man Will Lynch, who came into the tournament winning 46.2 percent of his draws, also should not be overlooked. The sophomore jumped to 60.8 percent (48 of 79) in the postseason, including a 12 of 19 showing Monday against Jake Naso, Duke’s first-team All-American faceoff man.
“To win a national championship and to be successful in May, you need secondary guys to step up and that’s exactly what happened,” Pat Kavanagh said. “We have so much depth and so much confidence in everyone on our team.”
What the Irish had early was a keen sense for exploiting fast-developing opportunities. Twice in the first half, Notre Dame scored off a ground ball in front of the crease, and Quinn McCahon scored from just beyond midfield against Duke’s 10-man ride.
That accounted for half of the Irish’s goals as they took a 6-1 lead into the break. Duke was the fifth team in tournament history to score just one goal in the first half of a title game and the first since Cornell in 1988.
The second half unfolded differently after what Danowski described as a “talking-to” at the break.
“It was somewhat direct, somewhat challenging their character a little bit,” Danowski said. “It was typical coach stuff.”
After missing its last 23 shots of the first half, Duke collected four goals in less than six minutes to make it a game.
“We braced for it,” Entenmann said. “We knew it was going to happen at some point. It just happened to happen when we came out of the tunnel for the second half. But we were ready for it and we knew we had to regroup as a unit and move forward, and I thought we did a really good job of that.”
Duke finally tied it for the first time since the middle of the first quarter on Balsamo’s unassisted goal with 1:01 to go in the third. But the Irish scored twice in the next minute, then never lost the lead again.
“I’m incredibly proud of our guys for fighting back and cutting that lead down,” Brower said. “When it’s 6-1, it’s pretty tough against a great team like Notre Dame to get back there. They just made a play when they needed to.”
For the Irish, it was the culmination of both a long-term build and a steely approach to this year. Notre Dame has missed only seven NCAA tournaments since 1990, winning its first postseason game in 1995, breaking through to the semifinals in 2001 and then making a title game trip in 2010.
This was probably the Irish's most potent mix of both ability and incentive, the latter derived in part from the tournament opportunity denied to the Irish when it was surprisingly excluded from last year’s NCAA tournament. Notre Dame won its last six games in 2022, then rolled through everyone not named Virginia in this year’s regular season.
After clobbering Utah and smothering Johns Hopkins the first two weekends of the tournament, the Irish took the third and most meaningful meeting with Virginia on Tevlin’s winner in overtime in Saturday’s semifinals.
Then came Monday, when Notre Dame played from ahead almost the entire game against a team it defeated four times in the last two seasons.
“All 57 guys who made a commitment to being their best and being held accountable by the leaders on this team all year, everyone was bought in, top to bottom,” Pat Kavanagh said. “It’s just a special group. It’s the most tight-knit locker room I’ve been a part of. Our culture is pretty special, but this year was just different from when we stepped on campus in August.”
And now, it’s really different: It has delivered the Irish their first Memorial Day triumph.