EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — There were plenty of incentives for Jared Conners to come back to Virginia for a fifth season when the NCAA granted a blanket eligibility waiver for athletes impacted by the pandemic last spring.
The chance to be a part of the Cavaliers’ lacrosse program, by itself, was a factor. The appeal of staying in college an extra year doesn’t require an explanation for most.
But the biggest lure was what could — and ultimately did — transpire Monday, as Conners and his teammates pulled off the most unusual of successful title defenses.
Fourth-seeded Virginia held off third-seeded Maryland 17-16 before 14,816 at Rentschler Field, a triumph that couldn’t truly be savored until the final buzzer but nonetheless one to be savored as the program’s seventh national championship and its first back-to-back titles.
Virginia beat Yale on Memorial Day in 2019. Last year’s tournament was wiped out when the season was canceled in March 2020.
“This is one of the greatest feelings ever,” Conners said. “It’s definitely the reason you come back. Talking to [fellow fifth-year senior] Dox [Aitken] after the game, there’s nowhere else we’d rather be. It’s been an incredible experience and an awesome ride.”
Redshirt freshman Connor Shellenberger earned most outstanding player honors, Matt Moore matched Shellenberger’s four-goal, two-assist line in the title game and senior goalie Alex Rode added to his postseason resume with a save on Maryland faceoff specialist Luke Wierman with five seconds remaining to clinch the victory for the Cavaliers (14-4).
— USA Lacrosse Magazine (@USALacrosseMag) May 31, 2021
Alex Rode’s save clinches @UVAMensLax’s second straight @NCAALAX title, downing @TerpsMLax 17-16 in a thriller. pic.twitter.com/xpwdcJyC01
“I had a rough day,” Rode said. “It wasn’t my best day in goal. Our defense actually played great. The FOGO took a shot and I was a little nervous. I thought I owed my team a couple and luckily it hit me in the body.”
It was a crushing end to the season for the Terrapins (15-1), who were looking to become the first undefeated champion in Division I since Virginia’s 2006 juggernaut went 17-0. Logan Wisnauskas scored five goals and added an assist for Maryland, doing nearly all of his damage in a frantic second half.
Tewaaraton Award favorite Jared Bernhardt had two goals and three assists in his final college game, finishing his career with 202 goals
“We threw it all out there for them,” Maryland coach John Tillman said. “We have nothing left in the tank, and we took this thing as long as we could take it.”
It was an exceptional afternoon for the Virginia offense, which was opportunistic at times (a pair of goals off faceoffs and Conners’ pole goal in the second quarter) but also broke down the stingy Maryland defense that was coming off a 14-5 smothering of Duke.
Moore and Shellenberger both had monster days, but Jeff Conner had three goals and Payton Cormier added two.
“We kind of have this stereotype as an offense that we play hero ball, but we really do whatever the defense dictates us to do,” Shellenberger said. “We took it as a challenge. We didn’t want to back down from Maryland’s defense. We wanted to go right at them.”
And so they did, building a 9-7 lead at the break before Maryland knotted it at 11 with 9:11 left in the third quarter. From there, the Cavaliers silenced the Terps for nearly 18 minutes, and ripped off five consecutive goals to take a 16-11 edge.
Shellenberger’s ability to get the better of Nick Grill, the Big Ten’s defensive player of the year, in a variety of ways helped. But it was more than just one guy who allowed Virginia to score the most goals any team had managed against Maryland since Duke’s 18-9 rout of the Terps in the 2005 NCAA semifinals.
“A lot of their goals came down to us not having the best fundamentals,” Maryland defenseman Brett Makar said. “We didn’t really have a clean game on our part. You really think about the one missed ground ball or the bad pick play behind. Just so many plays running through my head right now, and I’m sure a lot of the guys feel that way. Defensively, it definitely wasn’t our best performance.”
Just as impressive was the work Virginia defenseman Cade Saustad did against Bernhardt, who scored 16 goals in Maryland’s first three postseason games. Bernhardt wound up with a five-point day, but the Cavaliers prevented him from dictating the terms of the game.
“We had several different ideas and thoughts and strategies, and we ended up sticking with the one of ‘All right, Cade, this is your matchup, win it,’” Virginia coach Lars Tiffany said. “You don’t completely neutralize Jared Bernhardt, but Cade stepped up and was able to take away some of those opportunities.”
Still, Maryland wasn’t going to go quietly. Wisnauskas’ goal with 6:13 left unleashed a 4-0 run to bring the Terps within 16-15, only for Moore to score off a Saustad feed with 3:35 to go.
It took some time for Maryland to generate a chance to draw closer, but Anthony DeMaio finished a Kyle Long feed with 10.8 seconds to go to set up a harrowing finish.
“We’ve been tested like this all season,” Conners said. “We’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve had losses. We’ve had teams go on runs like that. We knew it was going to be a dogfight. We knew Maryland wasn’t going to roll over. Especially with that 2019 game where we had that comeback, we knew they were going to be hunting us down and looking to come from behind going into that second half.”
In that 2019 quarterfinal, Virginia scored the final four goals of regulation before locking things up in overtime. And when Wierman cleanly won the faceoff and charged downfield in the final seconds, it seemed Maryland might turn the tables.
Instead, Rode made the stop of the low shot, and Virginia stormed the field as soon as time expired.
“Luke coming down the middle, he’s shooting that shot,” Wisnauskas said. “He’s had a couple goals this season. Stuff happens. He’s in that situation and he shoots it and the goalie makes a good save. It’s not his fault at all. You can go back and name so many other plays. We’ve got Luke’s back. We want Luke shooting that ball.”
Virginia is the first team to win consecutive tournaments since 2013-14 Duke, and even with the unwanted one-year gap, it cemented what was already clear in 2019: The Cavaliers are back as a force in the sport after going eight years between Memorial Day weekend appearances in the last decade.
In its first title under Tiffany, Virginia was simply the more physical team against Yale. On Monday, the Cavaliers won the sort of rock-’em-sock-’em game Tiffany adores, one that reminded him of another championship tilt he witnessed that ended with a 17-16 margin: Syracuse’s 1983 defeat of Johns Hopkins.
This one was every bit as frenetic as that classic, and one that symbolized the evolution of Virginia’s program in Tiffany’s five-season stint. The Cavaliers were fast, loose and ebullient, and they have a matching trophy to take home and place beside the one from two years ago as a result.
“I’ve seen two Mondays in a row where there’s a confidence, there’s a fun, a joy of playing, as opposed to ‘Wow, this is a huge moment. Oh boy, this is pressure-filled,’” Tiffany said. “I’m really lucky that we’ve created that culture on championship weekend.”