May 16, 2015

Recap | Box Score | USATSI Gallery | ND Gallery

Kevin Corrigan, Notre Dame Head Coach
Opening statement…
“First thing that I want to say is that our thoughts are with campus and the student-athlete who died at Norte Dame last night.

“Today’s game was terrific. It was a fight. You make a couple plays; they make a couple plays. We go up four; they come roaring back with five. We struggled at times to be patient as much as we needed to be but that’s partly a credit to them. They were pressing out on us. You look at our goals, there weren’t a lot of assisted goals because they weren’t sliding around too much. And that was partly our patience as well.

“Defensively, I thought we got an unbelievable effort. Shane Doss played really well. And Matt Landis guarded (Lyle) Thompson as well as you can guard him. He’s a great, great player, and I thought Matt was terrific on him. But he had help. Our guys were making good slides and decisions. If you get caught in no-man’s land against a guy like that, he just kills you. I thought as though we did a nice job of not doing that too much. Overall our team-one the things about us is I think we’ve been pretty balanced, and I think that came through today-balanced offensively, balanced defensively. And that was a big thing for us.”

On the team’s depth…
“I’ll tell you this, the NCAA gives you 32 active guys on your roster, and this was the first year that I had a really difficult decision (about) the last two or three guys. Those are guys that play for us. They’re not just that, ‘Oh if this happened and that happened, we might need to go to him.’ They’re guys who are playing for us in every game and couldn’t be active for us on the roster today. That was kind of an unusual thing that made me think about the depth we do have.

“Then you have to play the depth. You get down by one, (and) you don’t want to play the depth quite so much, but you have to kind of force yourself because you realize you still have 15 minutes to go and those are the hardest 15. We gave the third midfield a couple runs, and we were just able to kind of stretch it out over the last 35 minutes.”

On Lyle Thompson’s impact on the game …
“I tell you, I’m really glad I don’t have to watch any more film on him. But I have an unbelievable appreciation for him having watched so much film on him in the last couple weeks. You look at just the numbers-three times scoring over 100 points. 100 points? That’s ridiculous over three straight seasons, and that’s when everyone knows you’re the guy. He just plays with a kind of equanimity. He never seems to get up, never seems to get down. He’s just always consistent in what he does. There’s never been anyone as creative as him in the game. You can argue over who the best player is, but I don’t think there’s any argument over who the most creative player is, the way he’s made plays over the last three years. And he doesn’t do it to showboat. He does it because he ends up in a crazy position. He made a backhanded skip pass today. We went into the game telling our guys you can’t get distracted by the great plays that he will make. He will make some, and you can’t get distracted by it. We’re not trying to stop the great plays; we’re just trying to stop the good ones. And if we stop all the good ones and he makes a few great ones, that won’t beat us. By and large, we were able to do that.”

On strategy for Lyle Thompson…
“I don’t think you have a choice. When he gets inside, when he rolls out and is going toward the cage, you have to go all in. There’s no halfway measure. In fact, we showed our guys a bunch of clips last week of them going almost there and then trying to back away. Well then you’re in no-man’s land, and you’re there for too long and he’ll kill you when you do that. So once you’ve made the decision to go, you have to go all in and just sell out. Matt Landis was unbelievable today. I don’t think you can play him better than he did. The decision making that Garrett Epple and Eddie Glazener were making were tremendous. They got caught very few times out of position, and that’s really hard because their whole offense is built on getting you out of position. They have a guy underneath him, they have a guy on the backside pipe, a guy popping out in front of him, they have the skip guy on the back side; and it’s all built to make you pick your poison, and our guys did an unbelievable job at not really giving him great looks at anything.”

On some of the shots from Albany
“You’ve got to give up something.”

On back to back final 4s
“Obviously it’s great. I don’t think about things that way because you’re so wrapped up in this team. This is about this team. They don’t care about last year’s team, and they don’t care about next year’s team. They care about this year. Not that all of them aren’t proud of what we’ve done in the past, but you get this one journey with each team, and that’s what this is about. So I couldn’t be more excited for this group to have achieved this because they’ve been terrific all year long, so I’m really happy for them to get this far.”

Sophomore Sergio Perkovic, Notre Dame Midfielder
On balance and depth of the team…
“Definitely was huge for us today, especially playing here at altitude. We played three-line committees, and it really showed in the fourth quarter. We kind of had a little more juice that Albany, I thought, in the fourth quarter, and an increase because of our depth and have some of the best depth in the country.”

On next playing Denver or Ohio State…
“We’re just glad to be there.”

On the lightning delay…
“We just tried to stay loose during the lightning delay. It’s obviously kind of annoying to go out there, but we all just tried to stay loose, and it’s a good time to get some coaching in. Coach Corrigan just put stuff up on the board and said we didn’t get a halftime, so it was kind of like our halftime-a little extended version. We got some good coaching in and just tried to stay loose and get really excited to come out after the lightning delay and try to just relax a little.”

Junior Matt Landis, Notre Dame Defenseman Ongoing into match up against Lyle Thompson…
“Like coach said, Lyle is one of the most electric players in the game. He’s a great athlete, he’s got great footwork but like coach said, it was absolutely a team effort. Me being on the ball, I knew I had the support of guys on the inside Eddie Glazener and Garrett Epple and Jack Near, they were pushing me. Then around the field, helping reduce the skip passes and lanes, that all really helped me have confidence on the ball.”

On how to prepare for Lyle Thompson…
“I think that’s a great testament to guys on our team, guys like Kyle Trolley and Kyle Ruhl. Kyle Trolley is a Canadian, and he has a very unique style of play, similar to Lyle, so I did a lot of diving against him. And I guy like Kyle Ruhl, who is a great attackman and has great footwork as well, so it gave me a really good look practicing against them and rotated them on myself and the other defensemen, and it gave us a really good look.”

On next playing Denver or Ohio State…
“Both of those teams are two great teams, and we’re just focused on us right now.”

On making back-to-back Final Four…
“I think it’s a testament to the growth of the ND lacrosse program. We’re getting better and better each year. But we stay grounded in our culture and our approach to the game. And I think we have great leadership this year. The juniors last year were a huge influence and now that they’re seniors, they’ve done a really good job influencing the whole team. They’re guys with great attitudes and they’ll be proud alumni.”

Albany Postgame Press Conference

Scott Marr, Albany Head Coach
Opening statement…
“I just have to say that I’m extremely proud of my program and how we conducted ourselves the whole year. I’m so proud of my seniors and where they’ve taken our program from when they came in as freshmen. We lost every conference game the year before they got here and we haven’t lost one now in three years. I can’t tell you how proud I am of Lyle and for what he’s done for the game of lacrosse. I don’t know if we’ll see another player like him for a long time. It’s really sad to see him go but I’m proud for what he’s done for our program and what he’s done for the sport. Hats off to Notre Dame. They were outstanding today. They played very strong and physical and good luck to them moving forward.”

On Notre Dame’s balance…
“We played them last year obviously and just like us we both grew up a lot over the last year. They’re very athletic. Just shaking the hands of their players, I could tell that they were really solid athletes. They played a really good game. They slipped up a little in the 3rd quarter when we outscored them 5ââ’¬0 but they had a few good runs. As Lyle said, it’s a game of runs and in the 4th quarter we just couldn’t come out of it. For Lyle to say that he had a bad game, any normal player who has five points in a playoff game would say that they had a pretty good game but he had a tough day. They played really good defense. That’s what they’re known for.”

On Notre Dame defending Lyle …
“He’s our quarterback and he had the ball a lot obviously and that kid did well on him. They kind of took away his opportunity to shoot the ball because they came to him and doubled him a little bit. Their goalie probably had four of his better saves against Lyle. He hit him in the knee twice and stuff like that. It was a tough day for him but give them credit. They played really solid defense.”

On Connor Fields…
“There’s no question that he’s been a great player for us all year. He’s very consistent and he was able to get on the board in just about every game he played. You see him shooting the ball a lot this year because he’s playing with Lyle but he’ll become one of our main ball carriers next year. He’s a very versatile player he can carry the ball well, he can put it in the goal, he’s a very good passer. I think with him and Justin Ray and Seth Oakes and a couple other guys we have, I think we have room to grow. The learning curve for him was so great, playing with Lyle and seeing how he conducts himself every day. That’s one thing about Lyle, he’s the most sportsmanlike person I’ve been around. He’s all class the whole time. He doesn’t talk to the other players or the referees and he’s humble as can be when he scores a goal.”

Senior Lyle Thompson, Albany Attackman
On the 4th quarter…
“After they got a couple of possessions we felt like we had it going into it. We were up 9ââ’¬8 but they came on strong. We fell behind and it felt like we needed to play catchup. I did especially. I was in a situation where I wasn’t playing smart. I was forcing things and at the time I kind of had to but I definitely could have played a little smarter. Their defenseman that covered me did a really good job and especially the team defense behind him didn’t allow me to shoot the ball once I got my hands free and did a good job of not allowing me to get high quality shots.”

On Notre Dame’s adjustments in the 4th quarter…
“They scored goals. They put us in a situation where we had to push the ball a lot faster. Like I said before I don’t think I played my best game. They did a good job defending. WE came out after the lightning storm and we all talked about what was going well for us which was Connor getting open on the top spot on the right hand side. I was just dodging and finding him open. We kept doing that in the 3rd but they scored those four straight goals and got caught playing catchup and forcing shots.”

On Albany career…
“It’s been fun. Coming in and having a notââ’¬soââ’¬good freshman year and building off of that with the team that we had and the seniors, I think we were the core of this whole group from the first America East Championship to the last. I think we were the core of the team and those guys are the work horses. Just being a part of the history of this program has meant a lot to me and I’m just proud to say I was part of it.”

On Coach Marr…
“I can’t say enough about him. He’s been more than a coach to me. He’s been a friend and a fatherââ’¬like figure to me, giving advice on and off the field. I talked to the team before the American East Championship about the team we have and the opportunity we have this year and I stressed Coach Marr. I got emotional there because I’m so thankful for him. He’s done a lot for me. He’s helped me become the person I am and the father I am.”

Freshman Connor Fields, Albany Attackman
On playing with Lyle…
“Like coach said he’s done so much for the game. You see people trying the shots that he does with his creativity and vision. I don’t think there’s a better player than him that’s ever even played. Just to play with him, you learn a lot in practice and see what he does and even in games and see what he does and watch film and see what he does. In game time situations the defense just focuses on him and that leaves everyone else open and you just have to find your lanes because he has such great vision that he’ll find you.”

On Lyle’s record breaking season…
“When he broke the points and assists record we were just playing our game out there and doing our normal game. He felt no pressure with the records and it’s kind of cool to say that I was on the other end of the goal when he broke the record for points. Just to be playing with Lyle has been a dream come true.”