The History Behind D-I Men's NCAA Championship Game Rematches
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© 2025 USA Lacrosse. All Rights Reserved.
© 2025 USA Lacrosse. All Rights Reserved.
A reunion so soon?
If March 1 seems a bit early for a national title game rematch, well, it is.
Notre Dame — which claimed its second consecutive NCAA tournament championship with a 15-5 Memorial Day drubbing of Maryland — meets the Terrapins at Atlanta’s Bobby Dodd Stadium on Saturday. It will be the third-earliest rematch of an NCAA final.
Appropriately, both programs have history in the other two games.
After Duke edged Notre Dame 6-5 on CJ Costabile’s goal off the opening faceoff of overtime on the latest possible Memorial Day (May 31) in 2010, the teams met on Feb. 20 the following year in Jacksonville, Fla. Zach Brenneman had three goals and two assists for Notre Dame in its 12-7 victory.
Two years later, Loyola was coming off a 9-3 smothering of Maryland to claim its first national championship. A renewal of the in-state series made sense, and the Terrapins visited Ridley Athletic Complex on Feb. 23, 2013, and came away with a 12-10 victory behind four goals and an assist from John Haus.
A couple other rematch tidbits …
• An encore of the previous year’s NCAA final in the regular season is fairly common. Of the 53 national title games played since the NCAA began sponsoring a tournament in 1971, Saturday will mark the 36th time the finalists met the following season prior to conference and NCAA tournaments. Defending champs are 21-14 in those games.
• Unsurprisingly, the game dates of those rematches tilt toward late March and early April. Schedules typically began in mid-March for much of the 1970s before gradually creeping into the earlier part of the month in the 1980s. Late-February openers became common in the 1990s. The first March rematch was on March 9, 1985, when Johns Hopkins (the 1984 champion) defeated Syracuse 8-6.
• Not counting conference tournaments, this will be the third rematch on a neutral field. There was Notre Dame’s 2011 victory over Duke in Jacksonville, as well as Maryland’s 23-12 thrashing of defending champ Virginia at Washington’s Audi Field in 2022.
Year | Date | Prior Champ | W/L | Prior Runner-Up | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Feb. 20 | Duke | L | vs. Notre Dame* | 12-7 |
| 2013 | Feb. 23 | Loyola | L | Maryland | 12-10 |
| 2025 | March 1 | Notre Dame | TBD | vs. Maryland** | TBD |
| 1994 | March 4 | Syracuse | W | at North Carolina | 17-10 |
| 2000 | March 4 | Virginia | L | Syracuse | 13-12 (OT) |
| 1986 | March 8 | Johns Hopkins | L | Syracuse | 11-10 |
| 1997 | March 8 | Princeton | W | Virginia | 14-13 (OT) |
| 1985 | March 9 | Johns Hopkins | W | Syracuse | 8-6 |
| 1995 | March 11 | Princeton | W | Virginia | 11-4 |
| 2009 | March 14 | Syracuse | W | Johns Hopkins | 14-11 |
| 2022 | March 19 | Virginia | L | vs. Maryland*** | 23-12 |
| 2003 | March 22 | Syracuse | L | Princeton | 11-10 |
| 2002 | March 23 | Princeton | L | Syracuse | 11-8 |
| 2014 | March 23 | Duke | W | Syracuse | 21-7 |
| 1990 | March 24 | Syracuse | W | Johns Hopkins | 13-12 |
| 2001 | March 24 | Syracuse | W | Princeton | 14-8 |
| 2017 | March 25 | North Carolina | L | Maryland | 15-7 |
| 2004 | March 27 | Virginia | W | Johns Hopkins | 9-8 (OT) |
| 2012 | March 31 | Virginia | W | at Maryland | 12-8 |
| 1981 | April 4 | Johns Hopkins | W | Virginia | 15-13 |
| 2015 | April 4 | Duke | L | Notre Dame | 15-10 |
| 2008 | April 5 | Johns Hopkins | L | at Duke | 17-6 |
| 2024 | April 7 | Notre Dame | W | at Duke | 15-12 |
| 1983 | April 9 | North Carolina | W | Johns Hopkins | 14-13 (OT) |
| 1982 | April 10 | North Carolina | W | at Johns Hopkins | 13-12 (OT) |
| 1973 | April 12 | Virginia | L | at Johns Hopkins | 14-9 |
| 2010 | April 13 | Syracuse | W | at Cornell | 8-7 |
| 1979 | April 14 | Johns Hopkins | W | at Cornell | 13-5 |
| 1978 | April 15 | Cornell | W | at John Hopkins | 16-11 |
| 1989 | April 19 | Syracuse | W | Cornell | 20-12 |
| 2018 | April 22 | Maryland | L | Ohio State | 12-10 |
| 1976 | April 24 | Maryland | W | Navy | 14-10 |
| 1986 | April 25 | North Carolina | W | at Virginia | 18-7 |
| 1980 | April 26 | Johns Hopkins | W | Maryland | 15-6 |
| 1974 | May 11 | Maryland | L | at Johns Hopkins | 17-13 |
| 1975 | May 17 | Johns Hopkins | L | at Maryland | 19-11 |
* = neutral-site game in Jacksonville
** = neutral-site game in Atlanta
***= neutral-site game in Washington, D.C.
Patrick Stevens has covered college sports for 25 years. His work also appears in The Washington Post, Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook and other outlets. He's provided coverage of Division I men's lacrosse to USA Lacrosse Magazine since 2010.
