BALTIMORE, MD – Second-seeded Notre Dame outscored Johns Hopkins 9-3 in the second half to break from a 6-6 tie and the Fighting Irish advance to Championship Weekend for the third time in four years after topping the Blue Jays, 15-9, in the NCAA Quarterfinals on Saturday afternoon at Hofstra. The win pushes the Irish to 12-2 on the year, while the Blue Jays finish at 10-6.
The Irish came out of the break and needed less than four minutes to turn the 6-6 tie into a 9-6 lead.
Josh Yago swept the top and bounced home his third of the day at the 12:23 mark and Notre Dame would tack on
Brock Behrman and
Matt Jeffrey goals before the Blue Jays had an offensive possession in the second half.
The 9-6 lead held until the 7:50 mark when an
Oran Gelinas save at one end for the Blue Jays led to an
Erik Chick goal that halted the three-goal Irish spurt, but
Will Maheras closed the third and opened the fourth with back-to-back goals to extend the lead to 12-7 with just over 12 minutes remaining.
Neither team dented the scoring column for the next four minutes before
Hunter Chauvette blew a step-down home off a feed from
Brooks English with just over eight minutes remaining that trimmed the margin to 12-8, but that would be as close as the Blue Jays would get as Notre Dame would tack on three more down the stretch, including two into an empty net while the Blue Jays were chasing, to account for its final total. A
Matt Collison strike with 2:49 remaining closed out the scoring for Johns Hopkins.
The opening 30 minutes solved nothing as the teams battled to the 6-6 halftime tie; the first half consisted of six ties, all of which came in the final 21:34.
The Blue Jays grabbed a 3-2 lead after the opening quarter as they opened the scoring just over eight minutes in and then answered a two-goal Notre Dame spurt with a quarter-ending two-goal run of their own. A Chauvette low-to-low laser from deep squirted through and
Chuck Rawson was on the back end of a great one more from Collison with 11.9 ticks on the first-quarter clock to give the Jays the one-goal lead.
After the teams combined for five goals in the final 6:34 of the first quarter, they exactly matched that in the opening 6:34 of the second. The Irish used a quarter-opening extra-man goal and a pair of Yago goals to grab a 5-4 lead, but the Blue Jays got five second-quarter saves from Gelinas and wrapped
Jameson Smith and Collison tallies around a Jeffrey goal for the Irish in the final 8:26 to account for the deadlock at the break. Collison's goal came with nine seconds on the clock and followed the fifth of Gelinas's five second-quarter saves.
The deadlock lasted just 2:27 into the third quarter as Yago's sweep ignited the three-goal push that gave Notre Dame the lead for good.
Johns Hopkins Notes of Interest
• Chauvette (2g, 2a) and Collison (2g, 1a) paced the Blue Jays in the scoring column while
Charlie Iler added two goals as well.
• Collison's two goals give him an even 100 for his career and he finishes with 100 goals and 47 assists for 147 points. He caps his time at Homewood tied for second in goals and ranks third in points by a midfielder.
• Chauvette's two goals give him a team-high 40 for the year. This is the 26
th time in school history that a player has scored 40 or more goals in a season.
•
Joe Hobot went 11-of-22 at the X with two ground balls and one caused turnover.
Notre Dame Notes of Interest
• Yago led the Irish with four goals and three assists for a season-best seven points.
• Jeffrey added two goals and three assists and five different players scored multiple goals for Notre Dame.
•
Tyler Spano turned in a 13-of-21 performance on faceoffs with 10 ground balls to his credit.
• The Irish held advantages in shots (41-26), ground balls (37-22) and faceoffs (15-11).
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