We are two weeks into April and Notre Dame has just picked off Syracuse and Duke in back-to-back weeks.

Kevin Corrigan’s message to the Fighting Irish? The same as it’s been all season.

“There’s all the sexy teams in the ACC, and they’re going to get the magazine covers,” Corrigan said. “If we’re going to end up on a magazine cover, it’s going to be Popular Mechanics. That’s OK with me.”

Corrigan is the first to acknowledge the quality and the depth of his league. It’s part of the reason why the Fighting Irish (6-1, 2-1) is already well-positioned to claim a 15^th consecutive NCAA tournament berth. He’s also correct in noting the rest of the league entered the year with more proven star power at the offensive end.

Notre Dame might have been overlooked during the winter for any number of reasons. The Irish did go 2-3 in last year’s abbreviated season. A relatively late start to their schedule (Feb. 27) probably brought with it an out-of-sight-out-of-mind element compared to the rest of the league.

But Corrigan has always been methodical, and he built this version of the Irish in typical fashion. There were strong holdovers, like four-year starter Jack Kielty on defense and junior attackman Griffin Westlin. There were sophomores who were ready for breakout seasons, such as sublime feeder Pat Kavanagh (12 goals, 27 assists) and goalie Liam Entenmann (.597 save percentage).

And then there was the class of graduate transfers, precisely targeted to meet needs. Former Bucknell attackman Will Yorke has 16 goals. Ex-Penn faceoff ace Kyle Gallagher (.663) has formed an exceptional tandem with Charles Leonard. Gallagher’s former Quaker teammate Kyle Thornton is a starter on close defense. And former Syracuse midfielder David Lipka is a regular contributor, too.

“We didn’t bring in all these guys that people are talking about,” Corrigan said. “We brought in guys who very much fit what we need and what we do. And we were bringing back an excellent team, I thought. … We needed to embrace who we were. We’re built differently than a lot of these other teams. We said ‘Let’s worry about being the best version of ourselves and not worry about what anybody else is doing.’ I think our guys have embraced that and done that really well.”

It’s especially been true in the last two outings. After a one-goal loss to Virginia to open league play, the Irish drubbed Syracuse 18-11 on the road. Then they handed Duke its first loss of the season, a 13-8 defeat that saw the Blue Devils badgered into eight failed clears and 22 turnovers.

It was also Corrigan’s 311^th victory at Notre Dame, breaking a tie with former Delaware coach Bob Shillinglaw for the most Division I victories at a single school. Unsurprisingly, the celebration was a bit muted.

“On to the next one,” Corrigan said. “We’re in the middle of a season. Things like that don’t mean anything to our guys. They’re focused on this year and the experience they’re having.”

A funny thing about the next one. Notre Dame has a rare open weekend in April, setting up the equally unusual back-to-back games against Duke. (The Irish visit the Blue Devils on Thursday). It’s a bit of a win-win quirk for Corrigan’s bunch. It was available to play this week if there was a high-profile cancellation, but it stood to gain some recovery time if no opportunities emerged.

“I’m kind of a contrarian in general, so when everybody else was scheduling 17 to make sure they got 14, I was scheduling 10 to be in a position to play 12,” Corrigan said. “We were expecting that some things would happen and some games would get canceled and people were going to need to pick up games in the middle of the year, so we knew we wanted to leave a couple open weekends in our season.”

A 10-game slate isn’t a problem, either. More than half of it is occupied by ACC opponents, and it’s hard to make too much of nonconference schedules in a year when some leagues didn’t bother with them and nearly everyone else took a regional approach.

In other words, things have worked out just fine for the workmanlike Irish — the popular mechanics, if you will, of college lacrosse.

“It leaves us in a good position because even though it’s 10 games, six of them are against top-10 teams in our conference,” Corrigan said. “The strength is there. The ability to develop and improve is there and hopefully we can get ourselves in a position to be in the NCAA tournament and ready and worthy to compete for a championship.”