Atlantic Coast Conference apologists still stewing over the omissions of Duke and Notre Dame from the NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament were partially vindicated Saturday night, as Virginia exploded for eight unanswered goals to defeat eighth-seeded Brown 17-10 in a first-round game at Stevenson-Pincince Field in Providence, Rhode Island.
Tewaaraton Award finalist and reigning NCAA championship MVP Connor Shellenberger continued to stake his claim as Mr. May with four goals and four assists for the Cavaliers (12-3), who kept alive their bid to become the first team to win three consecutive NCAA Division I titles since Princeton’s three-peat from 1996-98.
Payton Cormier scored a game-high five goals, Matthew Nunes made 16 saves and Petey LaSalla won 20 of 31 faceoffs — including all six in the fourth quarter — to help propel Virginia to the NCAA quarterfinals for the 34th time in school history. They’ll play either Vermont or Maryland next Sunday in Columbus, Ohio.
Virginia is the only ACC team in the NCAA tournament. In eliminating one of the six Ivy League teams who qualified for the postseason, UVA also ensured that an ACC team would advance beyond the opening round as one has in every edition of the NCAA tournament since 1971.
The lead changed hands five times and the game was tied on six separate occasions before the Cavaliers blew it open with an 8-0 run that started with a man-up goal with 5:39 remaining in the third quarter.
Brown, which looked so explosive early on, went cold at the worst time. The Bears (10-6) did not score for more than 20 minutes.
“What you saw in the second half, sometimes it’s experience,” Virginia coach Lars Tiffany said on ESPNU afterward.
The game was a homecoming for Tiffany, who played and coached at Brown and led the Bears to championship weekend in 2016. That’s only part of the teams’ shared DNA. Virginia offensive coordinator Sean Kirwan played and developed his system at Tufts under current Brown coach Mike Daly, who was hired after Tiffany left for Charlottesville to succeed Hall of Famer Dom Starsia — who played and coached at Brown.
Both teams like to operate at maximum pace, value volume over selectivity, empower their long poles (combined three pole goals Saturday) and play a high-risk, high-reward brand of lacrosse.
But the Cavaliers’ pedigree took over in the second half. They’re just built different.
Shellenberger especially.
The redshirt sophomore attackman scored the first two goals of the game but proved most valuable as a distributor with three assists in the fourth quarter. He has 18 goals and 14 assists in five career NCAA tournament games — all Virginia wins.