Now it was enough. Delirium had played catch with amazement, and they both ended up holding the ball. It was halftime. The stadium lights’ mandate lasted much longer. It was over.
On a folding chair, white and plastic and helpless against whatever was going on, the coach of the nation’s top-ranked team folded one leg over another and stitched his fingers behind his head. Then he leaned back.
Friday night Virginia beat No. 1 Wake Forest at Klöckner Stadium. The scoreboard at halftime read 4-0. Not in favor of the undefeated, top-ranked, reigning conference champions. It also read 5-0.
It finished, after a late rash of cosmetic goals, at 6-3. That marked the Cavaliers’ (5-1-1, 2-0-1 ACC) third straight result against a top-10 opponent, following an away draw with then-No. 9 Virginia Tech two weeks ago and an away win over then-No. 6 Louisville last weekend.
Against the Demon Deacons (4-1-3, 0-1-1 ACC), it was at first a soccer game. It became a high-speed game of croquet, a ball sneaking through one players’ legs and around another’s on its way to the second goal. The game jumped, with the third and fourth goals, to a jamboree.
Then finally it was a museum. A few thousand people sit around an exhibit, maybe a historical diorama. They try to figure out how this came to be.
Virginia Coach George Gelnovatch summed it up by grasping for something.
“I’m trying to think,” Gelnovatch said. “I can’t think of a first half where we have scored [four] goals in the ACC, let alone, I guess the team is ranked, for now, No. 1 in the country. So gosh, yeah.”
Gelnovatch could not augur this in his media availability Wednesday. He could, though, make one promise.
“We’re going to be aggressive,” he said.
His team held to that. It thumped the ball long off the kickoff, and within two minutes it produced two corner kicks, and after a couple more it forced a diving save from the opposing goalkeeper.
“Put things on top of them,” Gelnovatch said postgame. “Make it really tough for them. Squeeze up the field. And we saw that right away.”
Freshman forward Nick Simmonds delivered the first two goals. His massive frame deftly poked Marcos Dos Santos’s back-heeled ball over the onrushing goalkeeper for the opener and thundered home the second from inside the box.
“I feel like I owed it to the team,” Simmonds said. “I’ve missed a couple chances.”
If anyone agreed, they certainly considered the bill signed after the second of the goals. Simmonds walked off the field late in the second half to a resounding round of applause.
Jesus de Vicente, the architect of the second goal, was even more the showman. He split three defenders for the second goal, slipping the ball between one of their legs, and found Simmonds.
Then the Spaniard became a Roman. He raised his arms to the sky. They had that arch to them, like the statues. He looked up at the crowd, his arms raised even as teammates came to buffet him.
“The goals were not haphazard knockdowns, balls pinballing around the box,” Gelnovatch said. “They were great, great executed goals.”
Even the third goal, slotted away by freshman midfielder Bacary Tandjigora after a defender’s slide tackle left the ball floating in the box, came after a graceful passing exchange freed sophomore defender Alex Parvu down the sideline.
The Virginia confidence gushed. The Wake Forest players conferenced on the field. Wake Forest Coach Bobby Muus watched from his folding chair.
The fourth goal, in the 39th minute — graduate defender Sebastian Pop headed home a de Vicente corner, another delirious celebration ensued, and Gelnovatch slammed chests with assistant Adam Perron — cemented the unfathomable halftime scoreline.
Wake Forest made six substitutions at halftime, including to its goalkeeper, sophomore goalkeeper Jonah Mednard, who had played all but 16 minutes all season. It hardly helped. Virginia sophomore forward Luke Burns, the hero a week ago against Louisville, scored 15 minutes after halftime. The Demon Deacons scored three times in a 13-minute span after that. Senior Basit Umar tallied them both.
“There’s big frustration,” Gelnovatch said.
But Virginia, after the fifth goal, had subbed liberally. Seven changes in all, although Wake Forest also swapped seven players.
“It’s massively disrupting,” Gelnovatch said, to make all the changes. “But we have a game Tuesday, and I’m winning 5-0, and I’m trying to get guys minutes. And it’s a good team. Against most other teams, you just ride that game out.”
Gelnovatch had intended to also sub back on senior Reese Miller, who started the game after returning last week from a year’s absence. Miller went down after 25 minutes and came off. Gelnovatch said he was fit to reenter.
That game Tuesday, against Dayton at 7 p.m. at home, is a reprieve from Virginia’s brutal ACC slate. North Carolina, No. 2 NC State and No. 14 Clemson all await.
Virginia, despite being unranked for now, is atop them all right now, tied atop the table. Freshman midfielder Sami Ouloheu’s 90th minute goal tied the bow.
“65, 70 minutes of that game was exceptional, the way we played,” Gelnovatch said. “With the ball, creating chances defensively. We paid a lot of attention to a lot of details on how we did things defensively, and the guys executed superbly.”
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