Notre Dame begins its NCAA Tournament run at Arlotta Stadium on Sunday at noon ET, opening play as the No. 2 seed against Jacksonville. The first-round game will air on ESPNU.
The Irish enter the bracket with the kind of resume that makes home-field pressure feel more like expectation. Notre Dame has won two of the last three NCAA Championships, taking titles in 2023 and 2024, and owns a 30-26 record in its 28 trips to the NCAA Championship. It is 17-11 in first-round tournament games and has won 13 of its last 14 first-round appearances.
That level of consistency has turned Notre Dame into one of the sport’s defining postseason teams. The Irish have advanced to the quarterfinals in 13 of the last 15 NCAA Tournaments, reached Championship Weekend seven times since the 2010 season and made the NCAA field in 19 of the last 20 tournaments. This is the 16th time overall, and the 15th time in the last 18 seasons, that Notre Dame has earned one of the eight national seeds.
The matchup also carries a familiar, if limited, history. Sunday will be only the second meeting between Notre Dame and Jacksonville and the first in the postseason. The Irish won the lone previous game 19-7 on Feb. 16, 2014, in Jacksonville.
That history matters because Notre Dame has not merely been beating teams to survive; it has been separating from ranked opponents. Since the beginning of the 2023 season, the Irish are 30-9 against ranked teams, and 17 of those wins came by five goals or more. In the pressure of May, that is the sort of edge that can end a game before it becomes one.
Notre Dame has reached the title game on Memorial Day four times in program history and twice in the last three seasons. It advanced to the final weekend in 2001, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2023 and 2024, with championship games in 2010, 2014, 2023 and 2024. Against Jacksonville, the question is less about whether the Irish belong in the bracket than whether anyone in it can slow the run they have been building for years.
