NCAA Rewind: Suspect Defense Didn't Stop UVA's Run to Championship Weekend

Before USA Lacrosse Magazine looks ahead to what’s to come in 2025 — look out for our NCAA Way-Too-Early Top 25 rankings later this summer — our team of staff and contributors decided it was worth taking a last look at the 2024 college lacrosse season.

To do that, we’re taking a journey through 30 of the top teams in men’s and women’s lacrosse to see what went right, what went wrong and how we should feel about the season.

VIRGINIA

USA Lacrosse preseason/final ranking: No. 3/No. 4
2024 record: 12-6 (1-3 ACC)

What went right: Connor Shellenberger (32 goals, 52 assists) was a star right to the end, earning a third Tewaaraton Award finalist nod. Payton Cormier (65 G, 13 A) broke Xander Dickson’s year-old record for goals in a season and passed ex-Penn State star Mac O’Keefe for the most goals in Division I history. 

McCabe Millon (41 G, 25 A) established himself as a freshman and figures to be the centerpiece of the Cavaliers’ offense the next three years. Ben Wayer returned from a year away from the sport to emerge as exactly the sort of long-stick midfielder that Lars Tiffany’s teams need to thrive. 

Cole Kastner turned in a strong senior year on close defense, and Noah Chizmar and Chase Yager were a strong short stick tandem. 

Virginia reached the NCAA semifinals for the fourth time in the last five tournaments, moving past a late-season wobble to play on the season’s final weekend.

What went wrong: Well, the wobble, for starters. Virginia lost four in a row for the first time since 2013, albeit all against teams that wound up as top-four seeds in the NCAA tournament. That took a 10-1 team to 10-5. 

Goalie Matthew Nunes struggled in the second half of the season, enough so that he was yanked early in the 11-10 double-overtime defeat of Johns Hopkins in the quarterfinals. And with Maryland selling out to prevent transition in the semifinals, the Cavaliers couldn’t muster much offense, setting a Tiffany-era low in goals in the 12-6 loss to the Terrapins.

Season highlight: Shellenberger’s place in Virginia lore was already safe when he earned most outstanding player honors in the 2021 NCAA tournament as a redshirt freshman. But he had never scored an overtime winner before this year’s NCAA quarterfinals, when he came around the cage and buried one to allow the Cavaliers to reach the final weekend.

Verdict: Virginia could never entirely solve the questions about its defensive cohesiveness, a problem that surfaced in early March and then proved costly while allowing 18 goals in three of their final four games before the NCAA tournament. (A man-down unit that ranked ahead of only three other teams didn’t help matters.)

Still, this was a national semifinalist, and while an imperfect May might not meet the Cavaliers’ internal standard, it was by no means a bad season.