This year's Cavaliers can tell you it's a different view from the top.
With only three games left in the regular season, the No. 7 Cavaliers (13-2-0, 4-1 ACC) sit atop the ACC standings. Their three remaining games include an in-state matchup against No. 24 Old Dominion and then tough matches against ACC opponents Virginia Tech and Maryland to end the regular season.
The Cavaliers begin the concluding week of their regular season by hosting the Old DominionMonarchs (10-3-2, 5-2-1 CAA) at Klöckner Stadium tonight at 7:30. The Monarchs are ranked No. 18 in the nation and could vastly improve their standing with an upset of the second ranked Cavaliers. The Monarchs, who beat Virginia last season, bring a six-game winning streak to Klöckner Stadium, where the Cavaliers are a perfect 10-0 this year. Virginia will have to stop Old Dominion's potent offense, led by senior midfielder Kevon Harris.
The Cavaliers next head to Blacksburg to play Virginia Tech and will end the season a week from today at home against ACC rival, Maryland.
In terms of their record, the Cavaliers are a far cry from where they were at this point last year. In 2003, the team was 8-6 and faced the possibility of not making the NCAA tournament. A run in the ACC tournament, however, ended in a penalty-kick victory in the finals against top seed Maryland.
Virginia can only hope that Saturday's defeat of Duke, a game the team lost last year, will be the start of a better conclusion to the regular season than last year. The Cavaliers lost two of their final three games in 2003 heading into the ACC tournament.
"We have a lot more confidence going into [the final stretch]," sophomore forward Ian Holder said. "We've beaten teams in the past we would have struggled with,"
This year as the projected top seed, the Cavaliers will look to carry the momentum of a strong finish, and their current eight-game winning streak, into the ACC tournament to beat the other ACC teams looking to knock off Virginia in their defense of the ACC championship.
"We have a target on our back because we're number one in the ACC and we're ranked top five in the nation," junior midfielder/defender Hunter Freeman said. "So, it's kind of a totally different position going into the postseason."
It would be easy for the team to mail in the rest of the season and start focusing on their postseason goals, but to do so they would neglect games that could change their standing heading into both the ACC and NCAA tournaments.
"No one is going to talk about if we're 13-2," Freeman said. "They'll want to know 'Did you win ACC's and NCAA's?' It might be on the back of all of our minds and we're eager to get there, but we still have a lot of work to do and two big ACC games to finish out the season"
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