Notre Dame

No. 4 Notre Dame (9-1) @ No. 12 Villanova (8-4) Saturday, 5:30 p.m. Outlook: The winner will take control of the race to finish the season with the top seed and home-field advantage in the Big East Conference tournament. The Fighting Irish lead Division I in defense, allowing just an average of 5.6 goals. But the Wildcats - who are scoring 11 goals per game - might have the offensive personnel and schemes to solve Notre Dame.

The No. 8 Notre Dame men's lacrosse team trailed No. 3 Denver by two goals with less than two minutes left to play in the Whitman's Sampler Mile High Classic on Saturday night. The Fighting Irish (4-1) scored twice over the final 1 minute, 42 seconds to force overtime and Jim Marlatt (River Hill) netted the game-winner 1:09 into overtime as Notre Dame won, 13-12. The host Pioneers (5-2) took a 12-10 lead with 2:25 left in the game when Eric Law registered his fourth goal of the day on a 30-second man-up opportunity.

The College of Notre Dame broke ground on a 25,000-square-foot building to house its new School of Pharmacy on Friday, a project that will allow the school to expand from 70 to 300 students. Notre Dame opened the school last fall in response to studies that showed an underserved demand for pharmacy education in Maryland. The co-educational college, the first of its kind on a traditionally all-women's campus, chose its initial class of 70 from 500 applicants but has received 950 applications for the 70 spots in next year's class.

Let's focus on 'D' Chris Dufresne Los Angeles Times There are several "biggest" problems facing Brian Kelly at Notre Dame. Let's focus on defense, where the Irish continued to get bowled over by opponents even as their offense became potent under the "schematic" genius Charlie Weis. The Irish's woeful tackling almost earned a Heisman for Stanford's Toby Gerhart. Notre Dame finished 87th nationally in total defense, between Tulsa and Nevada. The Irish were 64th in scoring defense, allowing a whopping average of almost 26 points a game.

Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow confirmed Wednesday night that the school is in negotiations with Notre Dame for a 2011 game at FedEx Field in Landover. "We are in discussions with them," Yow wrote in an e-mail to The Baltimore Sun. "I really can't say more without compromising the negotiations." It would mark only the second time the football programs have met. The Terps, then ranked No. 21, lost, 22-0, to the Fighting Irish at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. to open the 2002 season -- Ralph Friedgen's second in College Park and Tyrone Willingham's first in South Bend, Ind. Friedgen will be going into his 10th season in 2010, while Notre Dame recently hired Brian Kelly away from Cincinnati to replace Charlie Weis.

University of Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan doesn't reflect much on his 23 years at the school, but there are some things he can't forget. Upon arrival, Notre Dame had no paid assistants and scholarships. The Fighting Irish didn't have any lacrosse facilities, and shared a locker room with four other teams. But now, they are close to becoming an elite team. In the latest Baltimore Sun poll, the Fighting Irish are ranked No. 4 behind Syracuse, Virginia and Maryland. And they are closing.

Ross Pospisil and Wyatt Middleton, two of the veteran leaders of Navy's defense, remember quite well the euphoria that followed the Midshipmen's victory over Notre Dame two years ago, its first over the Fighting Irish since 1963. They also remember what happened a week after that historic win: Navy gave up 635 yards of total offense to North Texas and narrowly prevailed in a 74-62 shootout. The lesson? "You can fall off the mountain as fast as you get up to the top," said Pospisil, a senior linebacker.

Loyola will enjoy its first berth in the Final Four since 1998, but an unenviable task awaits the top-seeded Greyhounds (16-1) when they meet No. 4 seed Notre Dame in an NCAA tournament semifinal on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. The offense will try to become only the third opponent this season to decipher the Fighting Irish's bewildering defense, a unit so fundamentally sound that it has allowed only one team to reach double digits in goals this spring.