Xander Dickson Becomes UVA's Single-Season Goals Leader in Win Over Richmond

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A little bit of rain — OK, a lot of rain — did little to slow down second-seeded Virginia Saturday afternoon in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Payton Cormier scored six times and Connor Shellenberger had two goals and four assists as the Cavaliers defeated Richmond 17-8 at soggy Klöckner Stadium.

Shellenberger’s outing was especially encouraging for the Cavaliers. The redshirt junior built on a regular-season finale in which he had a goal and three assists against Notre Dame and now has three consecutive games with at least four points for the first time this season.

“He’s starting to get into a rhythm, as you can tell out there,” Virginia coach Lars Tiffany said. “The conditions today were challenging, so you couldn’t really rely on planting your foot and changing direction at a hard angle. Connor did well taking advantage of that coming up the hash and making a couple really nice shots there. With Connor healthy he now really presents that double threat of is he dodging to feed or is he dodging to score. That’s when he’s most effective, when he’s doing both.”

Xander Dickson scored twice to take sole possession of the school single-season goals record for Virginia (12-3), which will meet either seventh-seeded Georgetown or unseeded Yale next Saturday. Derrek Madonna scored three times and Dalton Young had two goals and two assists for the Spiders (11-5), who were making their second NCAA appearance in a row and fifth overall.

Arguably the most harrowing part of the Cavaliers’ first-round experience was a 35-minute lightning delay after a first quarter played in nondescript conditions. That certainly wouldn’t be the case for the rest of the game.

By the time the teams returned to warm up after a half-hour pause, the sky was far darker. When they resumed play five minutes after that, the teams were stuck in a downpour. And even after that abated in the middle of the second quarter, both goalies were standing in puddles inside the crease, both sidelines were water-logged and sure footing was hard to find in several areas of the field.

“It was weird because we hadn’t played in a swamp before,” Virginia defenseman Cade Saustad said. “We’d played in wet grass, but you’re stepping in and just sinking. We tried to figure it out before we resumed, and then it started pouring and we couldn’t really hear anything. It was a tough transition into that, but once we got settled in, we felt fine.”

Virginia led 5-2 at the time of the delay, and Richmond pulled within two a couple times in the second quarter. At the time, it seemed the Cavaliers’ athleticism might be neutralized by the boggy conditions.

Then Virginia ripped off three consecutive unassisted goals — by Cormier, short stick defensive midfielder Noah Chizmar off the ensuing faceoff and then Shellenberger — before Griffin Schutz deposited a Jeff Conner feed with 13 seconds left in the half to make it 10-4.

Shellenberger — who was the most outstanding player of Virginia’s 2021 title run and this week was named a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award for the second year in a row — looked much more like himself than he did in the middle of the season.  He missed a game against North Carolina last month, and said it was shortly after his first contest that he began to get back closer to normal.

“I think after the second Duke game I felt like I was really starting to turn the corner and starting to be able to practice a lot more and be able to get that chemistry back with our offense,” Shellenberger said. “To be able to pose that threat of not just dodging to feed but also hopefully turned the corner and hopefully the shooting will come down the stretch as well.

Shellenberger now has 21 goals and 47 assists.

Dickson entered the day with 56 goals, tied with Doug Knight’s 1996 season for the most in Cavaliers history. He scored Virginia’s second goal with 12:35 left in the first quarter, then tacked on another later in the period.

The fifth-year senior had 52 goals in his career entering the season.

“It’s been an unbelievable year,” Shellenberger said. “Everyone’s become familiar with Xander’s story and not having the biggest role, and now this year he’s setting some of the all-time marks, which is pretty cool. I think it’s just a testament to the type of person Xander is and how hard-working he is. He’s had his head down the whole time here, and he hasn’t given up or complained. He kept putting in the work.”

Richmond has made itself a postseason regular in its decade as a Division I program, and last year the Spiders pushed Penn to overtime in the first round before falling to the Quakers.

That, coupled with a victory over the Cavaliers during the regular season last year, meant Richmond was anything but intimidated, even if it did suffer a 25-8 loss at Klöckner on March 4. Of course, it also meant Virginia had more than a passing familiarity with the Spiders.

The Cavaliers’ transition game and faceoff advantage (Petey LaSalla was 18 of 27 at the X for Virginia) helped create some separation, but the steady Spiders still ended the year as Atlantic 10 champs in the first season the league sponsored men’s lacrosse.

“Richmond hasn’t gone into a competition in my five years thinking we’re not going to win a game, and that just starts with our head [coach Dan Chemotti] right here,” defenseman Jake Saunders said. “It’s just infectious through the entire team. Today wasn’t our day, but make sure you keep tabs on Richmond next year because we’re going to keep on coming back every single time.”

At the very least, both teams will take away the memory of throwback conditions. Only Virginia, though, will play on for another week.

“It felt like when you were 10, 12 years playing on a muddy, grassy field and you just played for the pure joy of it,” Tiffany said. “We’re really spoiled here at the University of Virginia with incredible facilities, and we get to play in a lot of other great venues as well. We don’t get to play in the slop very often. I really appreciate how much our men enjoyed it and embraced it and really had fun with this today.”