Notre Dame national championship game comeback falls short vs. Princeton with dynasty on the line

Nobody can ever take anything away from what Notre Dame accomplished as back-to-back men’s lacrosse national champions in 2023 and 2024. What transpired for the Fighting Irish in the 2026 national title game on Monday, though, was the antithesis of those recent triumphs.

For a while — but not for the entirety of the afternoon at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Va. — antithesis was a Memorial Day backyard barbecue-sized understatement.

What briefly appeared to be a blowout in the blue and gold’s favor, with three Notre Dame goals out of the gates in the first five minutes of the first quarter, quickly turned into a runaway for the top-ranked Tigers, who scored 11 consecutive times from the end of the first quarter and all through the second to hold what ended up being an insurmountable eight-goal edge at halftime.

Notre Dame came out of the locker room determined to make of game of the natty with a dynasty on the line, scoring twice in the early stages of the third, but Princeton eventually had an answer for everything.

The Tigers won, 16-9, to claim their seventh all-time national championship and first since 2001. The Irish (13-3) fought, but they fell short of their third national title and instead settled for their third national runner-up finish.

The second quarter, won 8-0 by Princeton (17-2), will end up being one Notre Dame head coach Kevin Corrigan rues for a while. The Irish couldn’t win face offs, so they couldn’t get into any sort of rhythm and flow offensively. In that vein, they couldn’t solve Princeton’s zone defense for the life of them when they actually did have the ball in the o-zone. They couldn’t fight through the picks Princeton set to open up space in the Tigers’ offensive sets, either, which were much more dangerous than those of Notre Dame.

“Today was just not our day,” Corrigan said. “It just was not our day. We felt like there were periods of the game where we got outworked. We felt there were periods of the game where we just got outplayed, and I know there were large periods of the game where we were outcoached. And this was very disappointing result for a team that found a way week after week all year long to put themselves in a great position to win and did what needed to be done, and we just didn’t have that today.”

The only thing that was working for Notre Dame from start to finish — rather ironically in a game in which Princeton found the back of the net so many times — was the outstanding effort of redshirt junior goalie Thomas Ricciardelli. He made 12 first-half saves, many of them of the ridiculous goal-saving variety. With a lesser man guarding the Irish’s cage, they might’ve surrendered something in the neighborhood of 15 goals in the first 30 minutes. Instead, the Tigers didn’t score their 15th goal until midway through the fourth quarter.

Ricciardelli finished the match with 19 saves. Josh Yago and Will Angrick had two goals apiece, and dual-sport stars Matt Jeffery and Dylan Faison, both wide receivers on Marcus Freeman‘s football team, tallied a goal each. The Irish needed a lot more from those heavy hitters and everyone else on the roster to keep up with Princeton, however. The Tigers’ attack men had a field day.

Colin Burns had a hat trick. Chad Palumbo one-upped him with a four-goal game, finishing the season with a staggering 48 tallies. Nate Kabiri had three assists to bring his end-of-season total to that same number, 48. All season, Princeton was too much to handle offensively except for on two occasions. Monday was not another anomaly.

“They were moving the ball pretty well,” Ricciardelli said. “They were winning one-on-one matchups, and that’s something we prided ourselves on coming into the game. It sucks that we couldn’t kind of stop them and stop the bleeding, because they certainly scored and they scored in bunches there.”

Twice in the second half, Notre Dame pulled within five goals. In those moments, it felt like the Irish needed a couple things here and there to occur thereafter to really make it a game. Those things never happened. The Tigers made sure they wouldn’t. They were deemed the best team in the nation going into the tournament, and they proved themselves to be just that by the end of it.

Like Duke had to do to Notre Dame in 2023 and Maryland the same in 2024, Notre Dame owed Princeton a helmet tap at the end of the day. The Tigers were just the better team, and sometimes that’s that.

“In August we had the goal in mind to win the National Championship. And we didn’t get it done, but I think that we can be proud of the effort we put forward and the things we did to kind of get here,” Ricciardelli said. “And all kind of 54 guys on the roster just doing their role, whatever that was and supporting each other. It sucks that we couldn’t get it done.”