Senior attackman Steele Stanwick was selected second overall during last week’s Major League Lacrosse draft. Photo by Matthew Hensley

Eight former and current Virginia athletes were drafted into the professional ranks earlier this month during the Major League Lacrosse and Major League Soccer drafts.

Virginia men’s lacrosse senior attacker Steele Stanwick was the first Cavalier chosen during either draft as the Ohio Machine locked up the 2011 Tewaaraton Trophy winner with the second overall pick. Redshirt senior midfielder Colin Briggs also earned a first-round selection as the sixth overall pick by the Denver Outlaws. Senior attacker Chris Bocklet and redshirt senior defenders Matt Lovejoy and Chris Clements rounded out the list of five Cavaliers taken in the draft.

Former men’s soccer defender Hunter Jumper held the distinction of being the only Cavalier chosen in the Jan. 12 MLS draft as the Chicago Fire nabbed the standout during the second round with the 28th overall selection. Five days later, former teammates Brian Ownby and Mike Volk were chosen by the Houston Dynamo and the New York Red Bulls, respectively, during the MLS Supplemental Draft. The trio marks the 43rd, 44th and 45th Cavaliers to secure the opportunity to play in the MLS, making the Virginia program the second-most fruitful producer of professional soccer players in the nation.

—compiled by Stacy Kruczkowski

Danseglio, Tucker and Ottenbreit will travel to Turku, Finland next summer, as they help the U.S. team try to defend its 2008 crown.

“This promises to be a truly memorable experience for Greg, Tanner and Ryan,” Virginia coach Dom Starsia said in a statement. “There is nothing quite as stirring as playing for your country.”

Inside Lacrosse ranks Tucker, a Towson, Md. native, as the No. 10 incoming recruit in the country, and also includes Danseglio, of Islip Terrace, N.Y., as the No. 25 recruit.

Virginia, the nation’s defending national champion, and Harvard led all universities with three players on the roster.

—compiled by Ashley Robertson

After a one-game suspension, senior midfielder Colin Briggs scored five goals and earned Most Outstanding Player honors during the finals matchup. Photo by Chris Jacob

Haunted by tragedy, embattled by controversy and written off by pundits and fans across the country, the Virginia men’s lacrosse team achieved a glorious redemption by besting Maryland, 9-7, in the NCAA National Championship at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore May 30.

Senior midfielder Colin Briggs, honored as the game’s Most Outstanding Player, bagged five goals to pace the No. 7-seeded Cavaliers (13-5) as they claimed the program’s fifth NCAA Championship — and first since 2006.

The title-clinching win against the rival Terrapins proved surprising — and especially satisfying — for myriad reasons, among them the fact that Virginia entered the final hoping to become the first championship squad with five losses and a seed of seven or lower.

“The game today epitomized the kind of season that we’ve had,” coach Dom Starsia told reporters after winning his fourth title at Virginia.

While Virginia’s 2006 championship team took the lacrosse world by storm with a perfect 17-0 record that exemplified season-long dominance, these 2011 Cavaliers struggled to find their on-field form for much of the regular season’s second half.

After a 7-1 start, then-No. 2 Virginia dropped four of its next five contests — including back-to-back losses to hated rival Duke — and briefly slipped outside the top 10 in the men’s lacrosse rankings.

“No, that was a walk in the park in terms of this one,” Starsia said of comparing his 2006 and 2011 championship seasons. “That was a wonderful team, but this moment right now is particularly gratifying when you consider everything that we have had to go through to this point.”

In addition to inconsistent and underwhelming play during the final five weeks of the regular season, the Cavaliers clearly carried the added weight of the intense scrutiny that accompanied the program’s first season following the May 2010 death of Virginia women’s lacrosse player Yeardley Love.

According to The Washington Post, the revelation that eight Virginia men’s lacrosse players — including George Huguely, who was indicted April 18 on murder charges in connection with Love’s death — had been arrested for alcohol-related events prompted the team to adopt a new, stricter alcohol policy for the 2011 season.

The Post reported that new alcohol rules — established by vote of the players — exacerbated the squad’s late-season setbacks when Starsia announced the dismissal of midfielder Shamel Bratton for his third violation of team policies and the indefinite suspension midfielder Rhamel Bratton for his second violation.

The twin brothers — who reportedly refused to comply with the team’s stricter alcohol policy and unsuccessfully urged teammates to soften the rules — both were suspended for the Feb. 26 win against Stony Brook, and Shamel Bratton also was suspended for the April 2 loss against Maryland. Rhamel Bratton did not take the field for the remainder of the season.

Starsia also suspended two other starters for key games due to seemingly similar violations of unspecified team rules. Goalie Adam Ghitelman missed the Feb. 19 season opener against Drexel, and Briggs was held out of the May 28 NCAA semifinal against Denver.

“I was definitely disappointed in myself,” Briggs told reporters, “but I just thought to myself that I would come back [for the championship game] and I was able to get some opportunities.”

Despite boasting a roster loaded with All-American talent at season’s start, this collection of issues on and off the field seemed destined to doom Virginia during the NCAA Championships.

The Cavaliers did little to dissuade their naysayers after squeaking past an upstart Bucknell team with a 13-12 overtime nail-biter during the first round, but quietly gained momentum after a 13-9 upset of No. 2-ranked Cornell in the quarterfinals.

Virginia then flexed its lacrosse blueblood muscles against the Cinderella story of the tournament, Denver, for a suffocating 14-8 semifinal victory before finally dispatching Maryland, making history and ending an undoubtedly trying season in truly spectacular fashion.

“Being here after a lot of rough times, especially through this roller coaster ride that we had … I couldn’t ask for a better class,” Briggs said.

At least one other Cavalier player admitted that Virginia’s championship chances seemed far-fetched during the latter half of such an up-and-down season.

“I don’t know [if I expected Virginia to win the title], probably not to be honest,” senior attackman Steele Stanwick said. “I always had faith in this team, but I don’t know if I thought this would have been the end result. It really shows what this team is all about and everyone bought into the whole team philosophy.”

Stanwick, a team captain who led Virginia with 70 points and 38 assists, added more hardware to his haul June 2 when he became the third Cavalier to accept the Tewaaraton Trophy, awarded to the top NCAA men’s lacrosse player.

Starsia also received due recognition for leading the Cavaliers from one of the program’s deepest valleys to the peak of the college lacrosse world. However, the nominee for Best Coach/Manager at the 2011 ESPY Awards and the winningest coach in Division I men’s lacrosse history quickly credited his squad’s teamwork and resiliency as integral to one of the most gratifying victories of his stellar career.

“The fact that we are here right now [as NCAA champions] is a credit to the team and my family and the people at Virginia,” Starsia said. “We had to reconfigure ourselves midway through the season; they had to decide that it was important enough to pick themselves up and get going again … I am very proud of these guys and what they have done.”

“I want to wish Shamel the very best in his future endeavors,” Starsia said in a press release.  “He has made many contributions to the program. At the same time, there are standards of behavior within the framework of the team that we expect to be met by all of our student-athletes. Failure to do so on a consistent basis has resulted in the loss of the privilege of being a member of this team.”

Shamel Bratton already had served two one-game suspensions this season for violations of team policies. He was suspended for an 11-10 win against then-No. 5 Stony Brook Feb. 26 and a 12-7 loss against then-No. 10 Maryland April 2. Rhamel Bratton also was  suspended for the Stony Brook game.

Both Brattons reportedly missed the game because they violated the team’s alcohol policy, which is established by the players. The Post reported that new, stricter alcohol rules were adopted for this season in the wake of the last May’s death of Virginia women’s lacrosse player Yeardley Love and the revelation that eight Virginia men’s lacrosse players – including George Huguely, who was indicted April 18 on murder charges in connection with Love’s death – had been arrested for alcohol-related incidents.

The Post also reported that the Brattons blatantly refused to comply with the team’s alcohol policy and unsuccessfully entreated their teammates to vote to change the policy.

Shamel Bratton, a first-team All-American in 2009 and 2010, ranked fourth on the team with 20 goals and 28 points this season and finished his career at Virginia with 89 goals and 129 points, marks which rank third and first all-time for Cavalier midfielders. Rhamel Bratton, a second-team All-American in 2010, ranks fifth on the team with 17 goals and 22 points. The No. 11 Cavaliers (8-5) conclude their regular season at home Saturday against No. 13 Pennsylvania at 3 p.m.

–compiled by Matt Welsh

Editor’s note: The Cavalier Daily finished its regular production for the academic year Friday, and therefore no additional print editions of the paper will appear during the final exam period. The editors will continue to follow the suspensions as the story develops, however, and update The Cavalier Daily’s website accordingly.

Junior midfielder Colin Briggs started the scoring early for the Cavaliers (8-5) with a fast-break goal only 1:23 into the first quarter. Virginia kept that advantage deep into the first quarter and led 4-2 with 55 seconds remaining in the first. One of those goals came from junior attackman Chris Bocklet, who now has scored during 31 consecutive games — the longest streak in the country.

But the Blue Devils (11-4) responded with a quick goal to end the half and then scored five more unanswered goals for an 8-4 lead they never would relinquish. Six different Duke players scored during that 6-0 run. Briggs scored again with 7:29 remaining and trimmed the gap to three, but the Cavaliers would not get closer for the rest of the night. The Blue Devils padded their lead with another 6-0 run during the third quarter for a 14-5 advantage that all but put the game out of reach for Virginia, and then Duke added insult to injury with a 5-3 run to finish the game.

Virginia had 18 turnovers — its second-worst such mark all season — and was outshot, 41-33. The Cavaliers finish their regular season Saturday at home against Penn.

—compiled by Dean Overdyk

Junior attackman and ACC Player of the Year Steele Stanwick missed last week’s loss against Duke with a foot injury, but hopes to return this weekend. Photo by Chris Jacob

The second time’s the charm — or at least that’s what the Virginia men’s lacrosse team hopes as it faces Duke for the second time in six days.

The No. 10 Cavaliers return to Durham, N.C. for the semifinals of the ACC Tournament after suffering a tough 13-11 defeat to the Blue Devils last Saturday. During this trip to Duke, Virginia is ready to avenge last weekend’s loss.

“You build a little fire after you lose to a team,” senior midfielder Shamel Bratton said. “We get to make some adjustments, but we’re going to be the underdogs. To get another crack at it, it’ll be fun. If you’re a competitor, that’s all you want: another chance.”

The underdog role is not particularly familiar to the Cavaliers, as they enter the tournament as the lowest seed for only the third time since the tournament began in 1989. If Virginia wins Friday, it will face the winner of the Maryland-North Carolina matchup Sunday. But right now, the Cavaliers refuse to look past Duke.

“We have a chance to go into these ACC Championships this season and hopefully play two quality teams,” senior goalie Adam Ghitelman said. “But we’re focused on Duke right now. To beat those guys would be huge for our team especially because of the recent games and how they turned out.”

Virginia’s recent games against Duke are ones the team would rather forget — the Cavaliers have lost 10 out of their last 11 contests against the Blue Devils, including a 14-13 defeat during last year’s national semifinals. The team’s lone recent victory came during last season’s ACC semifinals as the Cavaliers went on to win the 2010 ACC Championship. The team hopes to repeat that performance this year and is confident it can improve on last week’s results.

“I went back and looked at the film from this past weekend’s game and it didn’t nearly look as bad as it felt when we were in the middle of it,” coach Dom Starsia said. “I thought our effort was pretty good overall. Duke scored some easy goals and we didn’t get any. We just have to be better.”

Getting better will be easier if junior attackman Steele Stanwick can return to the team. Stanwick just earned ACC Player of the Year honors, but missed last weekend’s contest with a foot injury, and his status is uncertain for this week’s game. After losing redshirt junior defenseman Matt Lovejoy to season-ending shoulder surgery earlier this year, Virginia knows it cannot afford to lose another key starter.

“It’s tough not having a guy like Steele,” Ghitelman said. “He’s arguably the best player in the country. You ask any team to play without their best player, it’s going to take a toll on your team … We’ll be glad to have him back.”

With or without Stanwick, the team needs a strong ACC performance to boost its seeding for the upcoming NCAA Tournament. For now, however, the team is just worried about playing.

“I don’t even have an idea of what we’re ranked right now or what we possibly could be seeded if the season ended right now,” Bratton said. “I’m just ready to play. If we’re in the playoffs, we’ll be there to play.”

Faceoff is slated for 7:30 p.m. Friday. The championship game will be played Sunday afternoon at 3:30 in Durham, N.C..

Junior midfielder Colin Briggs tallied a career-best four goals against Duke, but he could not prevent another loss to the Cavaliers’ chief ACC rival. Virginia has now lost 10 of its last 11 games against the Blue Devils. Photo by Chris Jacob

Despite a second straight hat trick by junior midfielder Colin Briggs, the No. 7 Virginia men’s lacrosse team lost its second ACC game of the season against No. 10 Duke, 13-11, in Durham, N.C. Saturday.

Briggs scored the first of his career-high four goals just 90 seconds into the game to give the Cavaliers (8-4, 1-2 ACC) an early 1-0 lead. The Blue Devils responded with three unanswered goals, however, and continued their offensive onslaught to finish the first quarter with a 6-3 lead. Senior midfielder Shamel Bratton scored the first goal of the second half and later added an assist to match former teammate Brian Carroll for the Virginia midfielder scoring record with 128 points. Virginia tied the game at 7-7 with 13:41 left in the third quarter, but Duke (10-4, 3-0 ACC) answered with four straight goals and held an 11-8 lead at the end of the third quarter. Duke scored two more goals and seemingly put the game out of reach at 13-8 with 7:05 left to play. Junior attacker Chris Bocklet, sophomore midfielder Chris LaPierre and Briggs each scored during the final seven minutes to give the Blue Devils a scare, but Duke held on for victory by a final score of 13-11.

Despite finishing tied with Maryland and North Carolina for the No. 2 spot in the ACC, the Cavaliers enter ACC tournament as the No. 4 seed because of tiebreakers. Virginia faces Duke again in the conference tournament semifinals in Durham Friday at 7:30 p.m.

—compiled by Dean Overdyk

Senior midfielder Bray Malphrus tries for potentially the last time to beat Duke. He and Virginia’s other seniors are 53-12 during their four years, but have struggled to foil the Blue Devils. Photo by Matt Hensley

The Virginia men’s lacrosse team has lost 17 games since 2004; nine of those losses have come against Duke. In fact, the Cavaliers have dropped nine of their last 10 matchups against the Blue Devils, including a 14-13 defeat during last year’s NCAA semifinal game. This weekend, the No. 7 Virginia team travels to Durham, N.C., looking to reverse that recent trend.

“In the past, we’ve had some matchup issues [against Duke],” senior defender Bray Malphrus said. “I think our matchups [this year] are a little better … but at the same time they’ll be capable… [The Blue Devil’s] intensity is always notched up one more than any other team so they find a way to pound you.”

Virginia narrowly avoided its first three-game losing streak since 2004 last weekend, stealing an electrifying 11-10 overtime victory against North Carolina. The team has fallen short of its historically high standards this season, but it enters its last regular season game believing it can peak at the right time.

“We don’t want to be hot in April, we want to be hot in May,” Malphrus said. “And as concerned as I was after those two games that we’ve lost … I’m looking forward to May. I think we’ve gone through the down cycle and we’re on the upswing.”

Virginia will need that upswing to stymie Duke, a team which sits atop the ACC. Despite losing first team All-American attackman Ned Crotty and second team All-American attackman Max Quinzani from last year, the Blue Devils have reloaded with a great freshman class which includes attackman Jordan Wolf. Wolf ranks second on the team with 20 goals and leads the team with 13 assists.

“They’ve replaced [Quinzani and Crotty] with some younger kids that are very capable,” Malphrus said. “They have [Wolf] on attack who’s quick as can be … [Duke] just rags you all over the field, unlike any other team we play. Most of the times on faceoffs, you pick up a groundball [and] you usually can just jog around and find the open guy. You play Duke, you pick up a groundball and they’re hounding you all over the field.”

If the Cavaliers can survive Duke’s energy, they have a chance to hand the Blue Devils (9-4, 2-0) their first ACC loss, as well as steal the No. 1 seed in the ACC Tournament. Seeding, however, is not the team’s paramount concern.

“We don’t worry about seeds in the ACCs or NCAAs for that matter,” Malphrus said. “A No. 1 seed is nice, but that’s a luxury. More importantly we just need to win this game.”

A win Saturday will give Virginia head coach Dom Starsia 325 wins, leaving him one win behind Jack Emmer for the most wins all time as a Division I lacrosse head coach. Starsia recognizes the magnitude of the accomplishment, but also said he has more pressing issues on his mind.

“It would be false modesty to say that I’m not even aware of it,” Starsia said. “As I get older, I have noticed the big numbers in my life. I have been married for a long time, my children are getting older. [But] I don’t feel like patting myself on the back. I’m busy enough that I don’t have to worry about it right now.”

Junior third baseman Steven Proscia — like many of his fellow Cavaliers — has hardly let the new NCAA bat regulations ruin his statlines. Proscia is batting .333 with a team-high 34 RBIs for top-ranked Virginia. Photo by Thomas Bynum

Virginia baseball is the nation’s No. 1 team for a reason.

Cavalier junior pitcher Danny Hultzen is a National Player of the Year candidate, and the rotation’s No. 4 starter tossed a perfect game. Virginia has the nation’s third-best fielding percentage and the 2009 Coach of the Year at its helm.

And the team has new bats — bats that have devastated hitters nationwide but may have helped Virginia earn the best record in baseball thus far.

Prior to the 2011 season, the NCAA mandated a switch to aluminum bats that are designed to perform like wooden bats. The rules force bats to comply with a “Bat-Ball Coefficient of Restitution” — a statistic that measures the ball’s bounce off the metal — similar to that of Major League Baseball. The NCAA also has reduced the bat’s “sweet spot,” or its ideal point of contact, down to three inches. Essentially, the bats have undergone complicated changes with a simple result: reduced offense.

“In the past, certain balls that you miss slightly would still go out, because the sweet spot was bigger,” junior third baseman Steven Proscia said. “Now that it’s smaller, those balls tend to not leave the park as much.”

Through the season’s first half, empirical evidence confirms Proscia’s observation. According to data from 1995 to 2010, college baseball teams averaged 0.82 home runs per game. The NCAA released statistics April 3 showing that number is down to 0.47 home runs per game this year — nearly half the recent average.

From 1995 to 2010, the standard deviation between home runs per year was just 0.03, so analyzing the data with an independent samples test demonstrates a statistical significance between the two means — in other words, it shows that the variation this year could not be explained by chance alone. In fact, the p-value of the data is less than .0001, meaning it is almost statistically impossible that the drop in home runs would occur randomly. There must be an explanation for the change, and the new bats loom large as the potential causal factors. Admittedly, this year’s college baseball players are different from the ones who preceded them. By some random variation, college baseball offenses could be especially weak this year or pitchers could be particularly strong.

However, looking back to 1974 — the year college baseball first introduced aluminum bats — home runs never have been so infrequent, so it is unlikely that the year of new bats just happens to coincide with the poorest power production in history.

Strengthening that conclusion, teams are striking out an average 6.9 times per inning, a comparable rate to the 6.8 times a year since 1995. By definition, strikeouts occur when the bat does not make contact with the ball, so factoring out the bat leaves offenses performing at similar levels. But for aspects of the game that do involve the bat — such as hitting home runs — the numbers are significantly down.

These statistics do not come from a controlled laboratory experiment, so causation cannot be absolutely determined. But the results confirm what the players already know.

The bats “are definitely different; the ball is not traveling as far,” junior catcher John Hicks said. “You can tell that there is a difference just by looking at the ERAs around the country.”

Looking at those ERAs shows a dramatic decrease in scoring. Since 1995, teams have averaged 6.45 runs per game, while this year teams average just 5.71, another statistically significant difference.

For Virginia, however, runs per game are actually above the team’s recent norm. The Cavaliers have scored 7.35 runs per game this year, nearly half a run more than its average of 6.9 runs since 2002. The new bats have provoked complaints from many college hitters, but they also seemingly have helped Virginia amass the nation’s best winning percentage.

“I think a lot of people would want to go back to the old bats, especially power hitters and guys that hit for home runs and have that type of approach at the plate,” Proscia said. “But for our program, we haven’t really been a home run-hitting team. We fundamentally hit, and bats don’t really matter in that situation. I think that’s why this year, we’ve been doing so well as a team.”

When Virginia lost potent hitters such as All-American center fielder Jarrett Parker and second baseman Phil Gosselin to professional baseball, preseason polls understandably predicted a drop in the team’s performance. Indeed, in 65 games last year, the Cavaliers belted 61 home runs. This season, the team is currently on pace to hit about 17 homers. After 35 games and 32 wins, however, Virginia is arguably producing its best season yet.

“The last few years, we had guys who could really hit the ball out of the park,” Hicks said. “We took advantage of it, but this year we lost the guys who hit a lot of those home runs. Now we are forced to handle the bat better and I think we’ve done a great job of doing that.”

The Cavaliers knew they would lose last year’s power and adjusted their game accordingly. The team features strong pitching and defense, two areas of the game that have been helped rather than hindered by the new bats. Virginia entered the season knowing it could not overpower its opponents, so the team instead embraced a small-ball style of play.

“I think it works well for our team,” Hicks said. “We can bunt, we try to hit line drives, we don’t try to hit the ball out of the park, and so we get ‘em on, get ‘em over, get ‘em in.”

The new bats forced every other college baseball team to adopt that same strategy, essentially forcing them to play a game that Virginia was better at — and a game the Cavaliers have been winning.
So while Hicks admits other players may complain about flyouts that would have been home runs in years past, Virginia is not upset.

As Proscia said, “As long as we keep winning, I like the new bats.”

Junior attacker Steele Stanwick added two goals and two assists against North Carolina. His balanced offensive contributions as a scorer and playmaker this season have yielded 23 goals and a team-high 21 assists. Photo by Chris Jacob

Junior attacker Steele Stanwick scored with 46 seconds left in overtime to lift the No. 9 Virginia men’s lacrosse team to a dramatic 11-10 victory against No. 5 North Carolina Saturday at Klöckner Stadium. With the win, the Cavaliers (8-3, 1-1 ACC) snapped a two-game losing streak — the program’s first since 2004 — and bounced back from a disheartening 12-7 defeat against then-No. 10 Maryland April 2 to record an important first conference win ahead of the regular-season finale at rival Duke this Saturday.

Against the Tar Heels (7-4, 1-2 ACC), Virginia scored three consecutive goals — including Stanwick’s first of the game — and jumped out to an early 4-1 lead during the second period. North Carolina answered in kind during the fourth period, however, as junior attacker Thomas Wood scored the third straight Tar Heel goal with six seconds remaining in regulation to knot the score at 10-10 and force overtime.

During the extra frame, the Cavaliers survived a North Carolina faceoff win and sustained offensive series before Stanwick skirted around slipping Tar Heel senior defender Ryan Flanagan and made no mistake from point-blank range for his second goal and fourth point of the game.

Virginia won despite North Carolina advantages in shots, ground balls and turnovers. Junior midfielder Colin Briggs led all scorers with three goals and two assists for the Cavaliers, and senior goalie Adam Ghitelman matched a season high with 15 saves and earned his 45th career win — tied for fifth-most in NCAA Division I history.

—compiled by Matt Welsh