College lacrosse is back. As perhaps the most anticipated season in NCAA history approaches, we’re featuring every team ranked in the Nike/US Lacrosse Preseason Top 20.
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No. 5 Virginia
2020 Record: 4-2
Pre-COVID Ranking: 11th
One priority stands out as a thread for Lars Tiffany’s teams at Brown and Virginia, a subject the coach often invokes as a foundational piece of his programs.
It can seem trite to point to culture over and over, but there’s no question about the sincerity in Tiffany’s when he explains its importance. Which is enough to prompt an only-in-a-pandemic question for the one of college lacrosse’s bluebloods.
How, exactly, is that carefully cultivated culture maintained over Zoom or in the limited practice sessions the Cavaliers had this fall? It’s a concern Tiffany readily admits he has heading into 2021.
“We’re not just Xs and Os on a piece of paper,” Tiffany said. “Our success at Brown and here now in Charlottesville has as much to do with the relationships that we build. Therefore, as the head coach, I need to ensure that we’re able to maintain those relationships and build upon them in this new virtual learning era. I don’t think I did my job well in the fall, and so I need to ensure we squeeze every opportunity we can when we’re in person.”
To be clear, few will cry for Virginia’s lost opportunities. It is still technically the defending national champion, the 2019 winner thanks to a riveting run built on tight victories and an impressive Memorial Day suffocation of Yale. It still possesses an enviable reservoir of talent.
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Yet it isn’t quite as old as some other routine contenders. Virginia made its one graduate transfer addition count, picking up former Merrimack star Charlie Bertrand. But just two of last year’s seniors opted to take advantage of an extra year of eligibility, long pole Jared Conners and midfielder Dox Aitken, who took a rollercoaster path back to Charlottesville after a brief stint as a Division I football player at Villanova.
If it felt like at the time Virginia had arrived — or, more accurately, returned — a year early in 2019, in retrospect, it’s fortuitous the Cavaliers claimed that title when they could. Or perhaps that very climb to the top made it easier for those seniors to call it a college career. Either way, Tiffany won’t have Michael Kraus and others to lean on while trying to strengthen the team’s culture.
“Winning a national championship in 2019 allowed most of our seniors last year in the months of April and May to make the decision of, ‘You know, coach, I’m good. I’ve got a job in New York. I’m good. When I looked at my goals that I had when I came to Charlottesville, Va., I’ve checked those boxes, so I’m going to leave,’” Tiffany said. “And I didn’t anticipate that en masse as it’s been.”
The Cavaliers are quite capable on offense, with Matt Moore, Ian Laviano, Aitken returning as offensive headliners. Tiffany will continue to use the program’s “Cultural Thursdays” as a crucial growth opportunity.
But there’s also an acceptance that, like virtual meetings and Zoom scouting reports, it won’t be quite the same as the 2021 season gets underway.
“How do we do that in a Zoom world? It’s certainly doable,” Tiffany said of team-building exercises usually done in small groups. “It’s a good replacement. It’s a good substitute. It’s not a great substitute for the real thing and being in the room. But man, I miss being in the room.”