The ACC men’s soccer tournament first round matchup between Virginia and Wake Forest is becoming something of a tradition. For the fourth year in a row, the two sides are slated for competition in the quarterfinals, with Virginia seeking its fourth consecutive semifinals appearance.
The No. 15 Cavaliers (9-4-4, 4-3-4 ACC) are pursuing vengeance against a Demon Deacon team they lost to earlier this year 3-2 at a match also played in Winston-Salem. Coach George Gelnovatch believes his team can improve on that “strange” result.
“When we played there last, obviously we lost, and it was a very peculiar game,” Gelnovatch said. “We feel like we actually played well. I think all of us want another opportunity.”
Virginia completed its regular season last Friday with an overtime win against Boston College. Sophomore Midfielder Brian James poked the game winner home just seven minutes into the first half of extra play, helping the Cavaliers eek out a 1-0 victory. No. 13 Wake Forest (9-4-5, 6-1-4 ACC) also completed its season with a home win, crushing Syracuse 4-1.
The Cavaliers’ late run of positive results has catapulted the team up the national rankings, making its ACC sixth seed ranking a relatively low assignment. Gelnovatch underscored the importance of this trend in projecting post-season performance.
“There are teams that win a lot of games early and through the middle of the season and then start to tail off,” Gelnovatch said. “And then you have teams that start to get better and catch a little bit of fire in the middle and toward the end, and those teams tend to take off.”
Both the coaching staff and players realize that a tangible switch in the urgency of play must and does occur during the transition from regular to post-season. For sophomore midfielder Todd Wharton, a starter in all 17 of Virginia’s games this year, this step up is real — even for routinely hardened ACC squads.
“Everything’s amplified a little bit because right now, if you lose, you’re done,” Wharton said. “No one wants to go out, especially [not] in the first round. The regular season in the ACC is a great way to prepare because of how many good teams there are in the ACC, but once you get into the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament, it’s a whole new level.”
Gelnovatch echoed these sentiments, stressing the do-or-die nature of the upcoming games.
“At this point, whether it’s the ACC Tournament or the NCAA Tournament, [if] you lose or you tie and don’t advance in PKs, you’re out of the ACC Tournament,” Gelnovatch said. “So, I think that the dials get cranked up a little bit and the stakes just get higher and the intensity turns up.”
Both Gelnovatch and Wharton harken back to the 2009 Virginia team that won a National Championship. Gelnovatch was quick to draw comparisons between the two squads.
“I don’t think we were in a very different place now than we were in 2009, like, psychologically,” Gelnovatch said. “I like where we are. Our mentality is good. We’re relatively healthy, and we’ll see what goes.”
Wharton, meanwhile, hopes his team can learn from the older squad’s stingy team play.
“I think you’ve got to be disciplined defensively,” Wharton said. “I know the national championship team from here in 2009 only gave up like one goal in their tournament run. So, I mean, it starts defensively, and then if you can just work for each other — play as a team — then I think you can make a good run.”
In this increasingly contentious rivalry there is no shortage of irony. The one goal given up by Virginia in their 2009 NCAA title-run came courtesy of Wake Forest in the national semifinals — a game Virginia eventually won in overtime 2-1.
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