Virginia again defended its home turf last night with a sound defeat of Mount Saint Mary’s, 10-2.
While the score may indicate a one-sided affair, other statistics suggest an even more Cavalier-dominated match-up. Virginia outshot its opponent 60-16 and won more than twice as many faceoffs. The overwhelming number of shots by Virginia (4-0) speaks to its impressive offensive ability. With only 10 goals, though, it also means the Cavaliers struggled to play as efficiently as they could have from the opening whistle.
“It’s not acceptable,” Virginia coach Dom Starsia said. “I told Danny [Glading], Garrett [Billings], and Steele [Stanwick] that we were just too casual early in the game. We have always run our offense through our attack. They get the bulk of the credit when things go well and they have to bear the burden when we don’t perform to whatever standard we have for ourselves. We’ve got to hit some [of] our shots ... I just don’t think we played, coming out of the blocks, the way we should be playing.”
Solid fundamentals and good decision-making were positives for the Cavaliers last night. While Mount Saint Mary’s (0-1) struggled to establish a possession long enough to find a rhythm, Virginia played on the other end of the spectrum in terms of overall fundamentals. The Cavaliers cleared the ball 21 times on 24 attempts to bring it out of their end of the field, while Mount Saint Mary’s was only 18 for 28. The Cavaliers also enjoyed a 49-32 ground ball advantage over the Mountaineers.
“You can move the ball four times and someone could be wide open, and if one person doesn’t move their feet to make a good pass the play is dead,” senior attackman Danny Glading said. “It just takes the whole team to have team chemistry and work on offense to get good shots.”
By way of solid throwing and catching, the Cavaliers achieved lengthy possessions that let them keep the ball out of their opponent’s sticks, while simultaneously allowing Virginia to take numerous shots.
Unlike other sports where a missed shot often leads to a transfer of possession, lacrosse rewards possession of a missed shot to the team closest to the ball when it leaves play — almost always the offense if the team has smart positioning. Long possessions can therefore be peppered with shot attempts — an aspect of the game Virginia capitalized on during last night’s game.
“You don’t get punished in lacrosse for missing the cage,” Starsia said. “As a coach you have to strike a balance between wanting every good shot to go in the goal and understanding that, at this level, good shooters are shooting for the edge of the cage ... You don’t want to discourage guys from shooting. We just have to get it around the cage. So generating a lot of shots is generally a positive statistic for a team.”
While the Mountaineers managed several longer possessions as the game progressed, even those lacked any threatening strikes at goal. Many offensive Mount Saint Mary’s possessions were truncated by poor passing and catching — a weakness no doubt exacerbated by aggressive Cavalier defense.
“This year we kind of changed our [defensive] philosophy a little bit,” Virginia junior midfielder Max Pomper said. “We feel like we have a lot of good athletes on the edges and we have been trying to go after athletes more than we usually have. We are pretty confident in [sophomore goalie Adam Ghitelman’s] goaltending — he’s backing us up pretty well. We’ve been pushing out a little bit — we enjoy playing that way, we enjoy playing fast.”
Virginia held a shutout going into the fourth quarter, and it took a Mountaineer extra-man situation at the beginning of the last period for Mount Saint Mary’s to finally find the back of the net. The Mountaineers scored again on a fast break less than two minutes later for their final goal of the evening.
With the win, Virginia continued its unblemished start to its season. The first real challenge of 2009 for the Cavaliers now looms on the horizon, however, as the No. 2 Cavaliers gear up to play No. 1 Syracuse Friday in the Carrier Dome.
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