Part of Virginia’s practice plan involves taking a half-dozen of the team’s best shooters to help warm up the goalies — a parade of potential All-America selections.

And then there’s arguably the most accurate shooter of them all: Senior Mikey Herring.

“Five of those six are bringing gas, and then there’s Mikey over there and they have a contest of who can score the most,” coach Lars Tiffany said. “It’s supposed to be for the goalies, but the shooters are having fun with it. They started keeping track, and invariably Mikey’s right there. He just pins the ball right in the corner.”

Herring is a relatively unsung element of the Cavaliers’ potent offense. At least he was until Saturday, when he scored a career-high six goals on just seven shots in a 19-10 rout of Robert Morris in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

It was a somewhat opportunistic showing, but also in keeping with the season Herring has stitched together. Of his 22 shots, all but one has been on cage. Herring has 16 goals, and his .727 shooting percentage is easily the best in the last 20 years for any Virginia player with at least 10 goals. In that span, only Matt White (with a .606 rate in 2011) has done better than 55 percent.

It can go unnoticed on an offense featuring the likes of Michael Kraus, Ian Laviano and Matt Moore on attack. Dox Aitken is already Virginia’s career midfield scoring leader as a junior. Ryan Conrad is a much-celebrated presence on faceoff wings as well as on offense.

And that’s perfectly fine with Herring.

“Absolutely, all the attention is deserved, because they’re great, great players,” Herring said. “I’m super-lucky to get to play with them every day. [Assistant] coach [Sean] Kirwan puts us in the right spots, so I feel like I’m in the right places on the field to make plays when they do draw a ton of attention, like they rightfully do.”

Tiffany isn’t remotely reticent in pinpointing Herring’s value to the third-seeded Cavaliers (14-3), who meet unseeded Maryland (12-4) in Saturday’s quarterfinals in Hempstead, N.Y. And it was clear enough to him when he arrived from Brown after the 2016 season, even if Herring had just a goal and four assists in a reserve role as a freshman.

The Virginia team Tiffany inherited had skill, strength and size, but it was relatively short on understanding the game’s nuances. That is a strength of Herring’s, and he emerged as an extra-man fixture as a sophomore and then played in every game with five starts last year, scoring 12 goals and adding 18 assists.

“He’s someone who can grasp schemes right away and execute them on the field without fail,” Tiffany said. “Combine that with his accuracy in shot. It isn’t moving very fast so it limits his range, but if he’s got half a second, he can really put the ball in some small, small spaces.”

That was clear with Herring’s tight-angle game-winner in overtime at Syracuse on March 2, a timely moment to deliver his first goal of the season.

AND THAT’S THE GAME!
The OT winner by Mikey Herring!!!! #NCAALAX
(via @UVAMensLax)pic.twitter.com/xh0A7v6mIH

— NCAA Lacrosse (@NCAALAX) March 2, 2019

It’s easy to trace Herring’s lacrosse savviness to his father Michael, who played at Dartmouth and is a long-time coach. Michael Herring has spent the last two years as the lacrosse coach at the Blue Ridge School, which is located about a half-hour drive from Charlottesville.

“I’m definitely super-thankful that he’s taught me so much,” Herring said. “It’s been great the last couple of years just so he can see the games. I basically owe all the success of my lacrosse career to my dad.”

His parents were on hand Saturday for his star turn in the Cavaliers’ first postseason victory since 2012. Herring’s ride helped set up Virginia’s first goal, and from there he was part of an offense that effectively shared the ball to put the game out of reach by the end of the third quarter.

It was a riveting final game at Klockner Stadium for Herring and his fellow seniors, and perhaps a hint of what’s still to come as the Cavaliers seek their first trip to the last weekend of the season since 2011.

“I think especially when it comes to this time of year, it doesn’t matter who is doing the scoring,” Herring said. “You just kind of want one more week of practice. It’s nice to be in a system where people are sharing the ball and have their head up.”

All of which means Herring would be perfectly content if he follows up a six-goal showing by sliding back out of the limelight and providing a slew of hockey assists while facilitating Virginia’s offense Saturday. Tiffany, though, knows how vital Herring is to making the Cavaliers’ system work properly.

“We are going to miss him more than anyone else in the lacrosse world will give credit towards,” Tiffany said. “They’ll be ‘Oh, they lost Ryan Conrad, they lost a starting close defenseman.’ That’ll be one of those team losses that as a coaching staff next month we’ll be asking ourselves ‘How do we replace everything that Mikey Herring was doing for us?’”