The Lars Tiffany era in Charlottesville has gotten off to a fantastic start. On Tuesday night, the No. 6 Virginia men’s lacrosse team comfortably defeated Sienna 20-13 at Klöckner Stadium to maintain an undefeated record.
Unlike the first two games of the season for Virginia (3-0), this game was more smooth sailing for the Cavaliers. Virginia dominated the night offensively, scoring a season high 20 goals — including 13 in the first half.
Virginia’s new fast-paced offense was on full display, and Tiffany said the team has really bought into the new system.
“They’ve accepted it, you know, we’re pouring gas on the fire at this point,” Tiffany said. “They love to play this fast, frenzied style and we wanted to step on the gas even more so tonight … we don’t want to settle, we don’t want to sub. We want to make the opposing defensive coach uncomfortable the entire sixty minutes.”
Senior attackman Zed Williams had a fantastic night, scoring four goals for the Cavaliers.
The Cavaliers got off to a fast start, jumping out to a 3-0 lead in the first quarter. Though Siena (0-3) would even up the score at 3-3, Virginia would rattle off five-consecutive goals before the end of the first quarter, jumping out to an 8-3 lead. The Cavaliers would not look back, as they rode a 13-6 lead into halftime.
Though Siena outscored Virginia 3-2 in the third quarter, Virginia still led 15-9 at the start off the fourth quarter. However, Virginia quickly closed the door on any comeback bid by the Saints’, scoring a flurry of goals to take a 19-10 lead with under five minutes to go in the match.
Despite the win, Virginia knows that it can’t get ahead of itself. Senior defender Tanner Scales said the team needs to continue focusing on improving each day in order to become a better team.
“I think we try to focus just on each day, each practice, regardless of the result,” Scales said. “Whether we win or lose, we just look at what we got to get better at, and there’s definitely a lot we can take away and get better at from this game.”
Senior attackman Joe French said he felt that Virginia played well for most of the game but left room for improvement with some mishaps on the field Tuesday night.
“We had a specific game plan tonight, and I think that for the majority of the time we did our job and we executed, but there were certainly instances where we just didn’t do what we needed to do,” French said. “That’s a product of a couple different things — I think Sienna did a terrific job of possessing the ball for a while, and we got a little antsy sometimes.”
Tiffany was quick to praise junior goalie Will Railey and the job he did against Siena.
“I felt like we were fortunate to have some very good goalie play today,” Tiffany said. “I thought Will Railey really stepped up.”
Scales concurred with his coach after the game.
“I thought he [Railey] really persevered,” Scales said. “We had a few breakdowns defensively, but I thought he hung in there and made some good stops.”
However, Tiffany said that the defense in front of Railey struggled throughout the night and that Virginia will continue to work on that aspect of their game.
“The team defense in front of him wasn’t as stellar … it’s something we still have to continue to find,” Tiffany said.
Virginia will now head on the road to take on No. 20 Pennsylvania this Saturday at 1 p.m. in Philadelphia, Pa. It will be a tough match for the Cavaliers, as they get set to face one of the top teams in the nation on the road. With the momentum they have begun to gain thus far in the season, though, they will look to remain undefeated through the first four games of the season.
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