HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Before it won an ACC championship, before it won its first NCAA tournament game in seven years and far before it was within reach of its first trip to Memorial Day weekend since 2011, Virginia knew one thing about its lacrosse season.

The Cavaliers would never truly fret in the face of a daunting deficit.

“We just talk about being that smarter team and that more composed team in crunch time,” senior midfielder Ryan Conrad said. “It’s something we have done an amazing job specifically this year with.”

And never better than Saturday, when the third-seeded Cavaliers vaporized a five-goal hole in the fourth quarter against Maryland, rallying to tie it before Matt Moore zipped the game-winner past Terrapin goalie Danny Dolan 45 seconds into overtime of a 13-12 victory at Shuart Stadium.

Virginia (15-3) will meet second-seeded Duke in the semifinals in Philadelphia. And it will do so after being stymied for 50 minutes by the unseeded Terrapins (12-5), who were poised to reach the final weekend of the season — at least until they weren’t.

It occurred in a flash, with Virginia scoring three times in a 44-second span to close within 12-11 with 2:41 to go. The Cavaliers would tie it on Michael Kraus’ shot off the crossbar that bounced back to near midfield but was credited as a goal with 1:14 remaining in regulation.

“It happened so fast,” Maryland coach John Tillman said. “You see the ball released, it happens and all the sudden the ball pops out. I didn’t have as good a vantage point as the guys on the field. You’re just kind of trusting that it went in. I did ask, ‘Listen, are we 100 percent sure that was in?’ and [the officials] said, ‘Listen, if we weren’t convinced, we wouldn’t make that call.’ I said OK. I’m not sure I could ask more than that.”

Jared Bernhardt and Anthony DeMaio both scored four goals for Maryland, which fell in the quarterfinals for the first time since 2009. The Terps were 7-0 in quarterfinals under Tillman prior to Saturday.

Conrad had four goals for Virginia to spur the Cavaliers to a place that seemed far away just three years ago, when Tiffany was hired away from Brown to replaces ousted legend Dom Starsia. Virginia had missed the tournament in 2013, bowed out in the first round the following two years and then went 7-8 in 2016.

“My class specifically had a lot of struggles when we got here,” Conrad said. “We had a huge transition with a new coach, and honestly it shook us up a little bit. It was something that we needed, I think. We were able to persevere through that.”

Virginia never got traction on defense in Tiffany’s first season, but returned to the tournament before losing a first-round contest at Loyola last year. Those Cavalier teams had a propensity to fritter away leads in the second half, and it was fair to question whether this year would turn out any differently.

Only Virginia turned the tables. The Cavaliers came back from down four with nine minutes to play at Syracuse to win at overtime. It erased a three-goal deficit in the last six minutes of regulation a week later against Brown in another overtime victory. And it scored eight of the last nine goals after trailing Notre Dame by five in a mid-March game.

Consider all of it preparation for Saturday’s surge.

“I feel like we look back on the Syracuse game, the Brown game, all those games and we were down by four and it gets to three and we’re like, ‘All right, we can definitely do this,’” said Moore, whose game-winner gave him 40 goals and 40 assists on the year, the first 40-40 season in Virginia history.

Such a comeback seemed improbable as Maryland authored a stellar defensive performance for about 55 minutes. Mixing in far more zone than usual, the Terps kept Virginia off balance and managed to stretch out possessions to apply pressure on the Cavaliers.

Kraus had only two assists in the first three quarters, and Aitken was especially quiet in the first half before scoring Virginia’s only goal of the third quarter. Meanwhile, Maryland stretched its advantage to 12-7.

“For three quarters, we weren’t getting good looks at the goal,” Tiffany said. “Give the Maryland defense a lot of credit for that, but Sean [Kirwan] made some adjustments and all the sudden it unleashed and the dam was broken. These guys made plays. These guys trust Sean, and you can see the results.”

Conrad got one back with 9:28 to go, then added another with 3:25 remaining. Still, Virginia was only within 12-9 — until Ian Laviano delivered a transition score 20 seconds later.

The comeback was on.

“Ian scores that goal, and there’s a penalty to bring us within two with three minutes left and [it’s like], ‘This is happening. This is happening,’” Tiffany said.

Maryland didn’t have much of a chance to answer. The Terps took their final shot with 8:15 to go, committing turnovers on each of their last four possessions. One of those was a shot clock violation with 3:53 left that immediately preceded Virginia’s outburst.

“As a coach, those are always things you look back on,” Tillman said. “Our kids did everything they needed to do. I needed to do a better job in that moment in managing some of the things in this game. These guys did what they were supposed to do. I didn’t do my job.”

With only 12 seconds of possession as the Cavaliers melted Maryland’s advantage, there was little the Terps’ offense could do as Virginia chipped away at the deficit, forced overtime and eventually claimed their only lead of the game.

Instead of getting ready to face another ACC team and advance to the final days of the season, Maryland faces months of wondering how its five-goal advantage vanished.

“It’s definitely tough to sit there and watch, but I think our defense did an amazing job stepping up,” midfielder Bubba Fairman said. “Their offense has been phenomenal all season, and I think our defense really stepped up to the plate and held them down. We had all the trust in the world in them. I think if we just got one more possession, we would have been there.”

Instead, Virginia moves on, having done so with a reminder of exactly what is at the core of its identity. For the Cavaliers, it seems, no deficit is too large, and no amount of time is too small to stifle the possibility of a rally.

“It’s just something that we rely on all the time,” Conrad said. “We’ve had so much experience just in this one year of so many comeback victories. You can hear it. Every single kid on the team has confidence in ourselves. Honestly, we don’t need to say it, but we still have guys out there saying ‘Hey, we’ve been here before, we’ve done this a hundred times, we’ve been down by more than this. We can do it.'”