Cormier Sets NCAA Record, Virginia Ends Skid with First-Round Win

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. —  Payton Cormier’s record-breaking day went a long way toward putting an end to Virginia’s longest losing streak in more than decade.

Cormier passed former Penn State star Mac O’Keefe’s NCAA career goals record with an eight-goal day as the sixth-seeded Cavaliers ripped Saint Joseph’s 17-11 before 2,063 at Klöckner Stadium to advance to the quarterfinals for the fifth consecutive tournament.

Connor Shellenberger had two goals and five assists for the Cavaliers (11-5), who will meet either third-seeded Johns Hopkins or unseeded Lehigh next Sunday in Towson, Md. Virginia had dropped four in a row, its longest skid since 2013.

“It’s no secret that we were on a four-game losing streak,” Cormier said. “We didn’t win a game in over a month. The good part about it is once the postseason comes, it’s a different season. Everybody’s 0-0 and everybody’s battling to get [to] 4-0. It starts with the first game. We were fortunate enough to come out on a good end. We start our postseason 1-0, and hopefully we can build on that.”

Carter Page scored three times for the Atlantic 10 champion Hawks (12-4), who were making their second NCAA appearance in three years.

“I thought our guys played really hard,” Saint Joseph’s coach Taylor Wray said. “I wouldn’t say that we played really well. That part is disappointing.”

Against Virginia, though, there was an understandable problem: The Hawks could not summon any answers for the Cavaliers' crisp ball movement and Cormier’s superb finishing.

Cormier had two goals in the first quarter and three more in the second as Virginia constructed an 11-6 lead. He quickly added two more in the second half, scoring one off the opening faceoff after long pole Ben Wayer shoveled him a pass, and again just 86 seconds later off a McCabe Millon feed.

By this point, teammates were well aware of where Cormier stood in relation to the career scoring record, shouting out updates after every goal. The record-breaker came off routine ball rotation during an extra-man opportunity, with Shellenberger slipping a pass to Cormier, who zipped it past Saint Joseph’s goalie Tommy Gross on a bounce from the wing with 7:56 left in the third quarter.

“Once it got close, everyone wanted to see me get it and they were putting me in good positions to be able to score and I’m just fortunate I have really good teammates around me,” Cormier said.

In addition to passing O’Keefe, Cormier’s day also included:

• Establishing Virginia’s single-season goals record of 63, passing the 61 scored by Xander Dickson last year.Becoming Virginia’s career NCAA tournament goals leader, a mark that isn’t entirely safe. Cormier has 32, one more than Shellenberger. Both passed the previous record holder Matt Ward, the 2006 Tewaaraton winner who scored 30 times in the postseason.
• Collecting a school record for goals in an NCAA tournament game, breaking a record he shared. Doug Knight (1995 against Brown), Mikey Herring (2019 against Robert Morris), Shellenberger (in the 2021 quarterfinals against Georgetown) and Cormier (last year against Richmond) each had six-goal days in past postseasons.
• Coming within one of the overall single-game NCAA tournament scoring record of nine, held by Syracuse’s Gary Gait (1988 vs. Navy), Brown’s Oliver Marti (1992 vs. Loyola), North Carolina’s Chris Cloutier (2016 vs. Loyola) and O’Keefe (2019 vs. Loyola).

“Payton put the ball in some tiny little spots sometimes,” Virginia coach Lars Tiffany said. “I thought the goalie for Saint Joe’s was anticipating well where the ball was going, but Payton still snuck it just between the body and the pipe. What a gifted scorer.”

Cormier wasn’t the only record-breaking attackman for the Cavaliers. Shellenberger now has 61 points in 10 NCAA tournament games, passing Steele Stanwick’s 58 for the most in Virginia history.

It didn’t always seem like a given it would be such a joyful day for the Cavaliers.

The first quarter was largely played on the Hawks’ terms: frenetic, scrambled play with plenty of opportunistic scoring chances. But those were spread around, and Virginia held a 6-4 lead even though it failed to convert four of its first seven clearing opportunities against the Saint Joe’s 10-man ride.

The Hawks closed within one on Page’s 6-on-4 goal on the first possession of the second quarter, but the Cavaliers seemed to solve the Hawks’ disruptiveness. Some of it simply had to do with getting its offense on the field; once there, Shellenberger delivered three assists in a span of 79 seconds to create a 9-5 cushion.

“That 10-man ride really frustrated us and we still had six goals in the first quarter,” Tiffany said. “I was like, ‘Fellas, if we can just keep the ball in our offense’s hands. …”

Virginia eventually did so, placing a great onus on the Hawks to convert the few chances they did get. The Cavaliers outshot Saint Joseph’s 32-13 in the first half and maintained a lead of at least five goals throughout the final 35 minutes.

That brought an end to the Hawks’ 12-game winning streak — the longest in the nation entering the postseason — and concluded a season that began with three consecutive losses before a team loaded with veteran offensive players figured things out and raced through the Atlantic 10.

“There’s certainly lots to be proud of,” Wray said. “Would have liked to have just had a better showing here today because I think we have a very good team, but it didn’t go that way. Disappointed for it to be the end with this group because it’s a special group and they did a lot for Saint Joe’s lacrosse.”

And Cormier has done plenty for the Cavaliers in his six years in the program and five on the field (he redshirted in 2019), even if there has been a tendency for him to get overlooked amid the constellation of offensive stars that have surrounded him during his career.

“The most important stat is what he does the best at, and he’s the best in the nation at it,” Tiffany said. “Yet he doesn’t draw the double team in terms of initiating at X. He can’t score from outside 12 yards. He’s not the greatest rider. There’s a lot of things you can say he doesn’t do well. But if you can do that one category, and that’s the most important category? That’s why he gets overlooked.”

Yet Saturday was unmistakably Cormier’s day. And it earned Virginia another week in the process.