PHILADELPHIA — It was a nearly perfect scene of postgame pandemonium. A sunny day, orange and blue confetti on the field and every member of the Virginia lacrosse program scrambling for a sliver of twine to take home as a souvenir of the Cavaliers’ 13-9 triumph over Yale in Monday’s national title game.
Who saw this coming when Virginia dropped two of its first three games?
Who saw it coming when the program made the painful choice in 2016 to nudge aside a legendary coach?
The answers there are tricky, especially with the benefit of hindsight. It’s far easier to summon a solution to this query: Who among the third-seeded Cavaliers will forget their masterful showing before 31,528 at Lincoln Financial Field to claim the school’s sixth NCAA tournament title?
“I don’t want to wake up,” fifth-year senior defenseman Logan Greco said. “I just feel like it’s a dream, and I’m going to wake up one day. I’m going to relish it as long as I can.”
Greco could appreciate Virginia’s rise as much as anyone. The Cavaliers (17-3) won 16 of their last 17 games, many in harrowing fashion, to climb to the sport’s summit for the first time since 2011.
Monday wasn’t about lucky bounces, wild comebacks or fortuitous officiating decisions. It was an efficient showing from start to finish, as Matt Moore had four goals and an assist and goalie Alex Rode, the tournament’s most outstanding player, made 13 saves against a discombobulated Yale offense.
Matt Brandau scored three goals and added two assists for the fifth-seeded Bulldogs (15-4), who fell a victory short of becoming the first repeat champion since Duke in 2013 and 2014.
Monday unfolded in unconventional fashion. Yale, a team so crisp on offense throughout the NCAA tournament, was sloppy throughout. Even as faceoff ace TD Ierlan turned in a superlative 18 of 24 showing (and Yale was 19 of 25 as a team), Virginia neutralized that advantage by forcing 15 of the Bulldogs’ 20 turnovers.
Oh, and the comeback kids who rallied from a four-goal deficit in the last four minutes of regulation against Maryland in the quarterfinals and a three-goal hole in the fourth quarter against Duke in Saturday’s semifinals? They trailed for a mere 99 seconds all day and led 6-2 at halftime.
“I’m sure our fans were bored, you know?” Virginia offensive coordinator Sean Kirwan deadpanned.
This was a grown-up sort of day for the Cavaliers, who didn’t trifle with Yale’s high-powered attack. Rather than permitting the Bulldogs to initiate their early offense, Virginia remained glued to their hands from the start of possessions.
Little wonder Yale’s only two first-half goals came on an extra-man opportunity and into an open net after Rode was drawn into a scrum on a ground ball behind the crease.
The Bulldogs’ lone hint of a rally emerged when they scored two quick goals to open the second half. But senior Ryan Conrad scooped up a ground ball off the ensuing faceoff, scurried downfield and fired a dart past Yale goalie Jack Starr (nine saves) to kick off a five-goal spurt.
The Cavaliers actually held time of possession advantages in each of the first three quarters en route to building a lead that ballooned to 12-5. From there, it was a matter of managing the clock — something Virginia struggled with in coach Lars Tiffany’s first two seasons.
“We played smart in terms of possessing the ball,” Tiffany said. “When we got here to Virginia three years ago, we were playing a frenetic, fast pace. While that was fun, it wasn’t really successful. We were able to manage the shot clock really well throughout the season. The pinnacle of that was how we did it today.”
With it came Virginia’s first championship moment in eight years, which featured an unexpected downturn from one of the sport’s bluebloods. After the Cavaliers claimed a title on a sweltering Baltimore afternoon in 2011, they managed a quarterfinal appearance the following year before falling into a fallow period of five seasons.
From 2013 to 2017, Virginia was 42-34 overall and 1-19 in regular season games against ACC teams. And after the 2016 season, the school dismissed longtime coach Dom Starsia — the architect of four national championship teams — and hired Tiffany away from Brown to replace his former college coach.
But Starsia had gifted his successor a talented roster, with oodles of capable recruits already in line to arrive. Dox Aitken and Michael Kraus were freshmen on Tiffany’s first team at Virginia. Ian Laviano and Moore arrived last season.
Still, the Cavaliers had a long way to go to recapture their winning pedigree.
“Honestly, freshman year, I didn’t imagine this happening,” Aitken said. “Not because we weren’t talented. It was just how things were. We were 7-8 [the year before], hadn’t won an ACC game. There were a lot of boxes to check off before we even thought about this moment.”
But one after another fell. Virginia won an ACC game and reached the league title game last season, a year that ended with a loss to Loyola in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
This year was even better, with the Cavaliers picking off ACC regular season and tournament titles after overcoming a rough start that included a 17-9 loss to Loyola on the first day of the season and an unexpected one-goal loss to High Point two games later.
“It was a little bit of getting better bit by bit, but at the same time, it was sort of more playing as a team,” long pole Jared Conners said. “We have a lot of alpha males on this team, a lot of guys who know they can get the job done. In the beginning, we sort of played separately and played to our strong talents. We knew we had to bring it together and play as a unit.”
Part of Virginia’s evolution was becoming one of the few teams in Division I that aimed to play at a more methodical pace with the advent of the shot clock. The Cavaliers’ strength was maximizing obvious offensive talent in basic ways. Moore became the first 40-40 player in school history. Four offensive starters finished with at least 50 points, with Conrad falling just shy with 49.
Tiffany, who needed a decade to build Brown into a final four program, and his staff didn’t need half that time to do the same in Charlottesville.
“It’s a testament to them buying into us and not just taking the first three years to settle in,” Kraus said. “They attacked it from the start. They gave us some free rein the first year. The second year we started to settle down a little bit. This year, you could just see how much we matured.”
Maturity was one of Monday’s watchwords. So was toughness. Rode was exceptional early on and steady the rest of the way. Petey LaSalla won only four faceoffs against Ierlan, but turned two of them into goals. Even with the disparity at the X, Virginia held a 48-46 ground ball edge. Its ride forced Yale into eight bungled clears.
“What a venue to play probably our best complementary lacrosse game that we could ask for,” Kirwan said. “Top to bottom. Offense. Defense. Faceoffs. Goaltending. Rides. Clears.”
It all came together for the Cavaliers, on no one’s timetable but their own. They kept winning overtime games, kept building over the course of a season. Externally, it seemed like Virginia was poised to take a step forward, and the trip to Philadelphia validated that analysis.
But the Cavaliers didn’t wait to seize the moment, instead controlling their chaos and adding to the rich tapestry of a program that had taken some victory laps on Memorial Day in the past — and now, it seems, will be a regular contender for more for the foreseeable future.
“It feels great,” Conners said. “It’s going to be awesome talking to alumni and being able to see a smile on their face knowing we’re back.”