Junior faceoff man Andrew Greenspan’s demeanor tilts quieter. Always has, going back to his days at the Brunswick School with sophomore midfielder Hudson Hausmann.
But then, “Greeny,” as they call him, stood up last week in a team meeting. The speech he unleashed brimmed with intensity. His former program was coming to town.
Hausmann knew this was serious.
“I've known him forever,” Hausmann said. “He's not always the loudest guy in the locker room. So seeing him get pretty passionate and fire us up … was awesome.”
Or, put another way — “a great hype up speech,” senior defender John Schroter said. “Absolutely love the guy.”
Greenspan, in his second year at Virginia after transferring from Notre Dame, unloaded to his teammates before the confrontation with the No. 1 Fighting Irish. A potent cocktail of words during a massive week.
On Saturday at Klöckner Stadium, he delivered the message with his lacrosse stick. He won the opening faceoff and finished 9-15, a real “spark plug,” Coach Lars Tiffany said, in the 11-9 victory that turned the team’s outlook as sunny as the blue sky that covered the stadium.
Tiffany, waiting at the back of the postgame handshake line, took a moment. Rocking a little, forward and back. A few yards removed from the rest of the line. He looked at the stadium’s hill, the kids and high school teams that had flocked there — then up at the stands, the regulars shouting their excitement.
He grabbed assistant Connor Shellenberger on the shoulder with one hand and slapped his back with the other, then stepped back. On the sideline, a member of the team’s support staff doffed his hat to the coach.
Tiffany, afterward, was asked about what the moment meant.
“It’s a testament that the men trust in us,” Tiffany said, “and then to be able to provide for them is important. So I’m just really happy for these men.”
Greenspan’s speech came in the middle of the week. Steve Looney, a 2006 All-American at Navy, spoke to the team Friday. He explained his ethos, Tiffany said, and the military mindset.
Virginia played invigorated, perhaps by Greenspan or Looney or simply the moment. Maybe even too invigorated. Freshman long-stick midfielder Robby Hopper ran around early swinging his pole like a scythe, trying at least two over-the-head checks in the first half.
The move is basically patented to Schroter. But even the player known for them told his fiery freshman to dial back.
“I was actually giving him a little heat in the first quarter to tone it down,” Schroter said.
Then came the decisive play. Notre Dame ball, less than a minute left in the game. Virginia led 10-9. On the broadcast, the Virginia players will later learn to their amusement, color analyst Paul Carcaterra cautioned the defense.
“Do not take a risk here,” Carcaterra said. “You don’t need a takeaway. You just need a stop.”
Except there went Hopper, once again, a third time, despite the warning from his captain, reaching over an attacker’s head. Notre Dame sophomore midfielder Matt Jeffery’s stick clean abandoned his hand, the ball going loose across the grass. That sealed it.
Schroter rethought his position on the move.
“End of the game it really clutched up,” Schroter said. “So I love it.”
Gone was the specter of a second straight year without an ACC win. Gone was the forecast of another missed NCAA Tournament. In came the first win ever for an unranked Virginia over a No. 1 team.
Virginia dumped as many goals on Notre Dame as anyone else this season, led by Truitt Sunderland and Brendan Millon, each with two goals and two assists, and McCabe Millon, with one goal and three assists. Hausmann gushed energy. So did Schroter, whose body absorbed two shots.
Two and a half weeks ago, on Tuesday, March 10, Tiffany talked on the Coach’s Corner show about mindset. Virginia had just lost to unranked Towson. A week before, it had frittered away a seven-goal lead against then-No. 16 Johns Hopkins.
Winning, Tiffany said he’d told the team, is a choice. Rod Fox, the father of former team captain John Fox, taught him the phrase, “winning is a conscious decision.”
It is not a totally literal idea, Tiffany will qualify. The opponent is there, too. But work hard and trust your teammates, and “you know that we are not going to fail.”
The weekend after Coach’s Corner, Virginia lost in overtime at Maryland, and Tiffany waxed about a shift in the tides. The team turned the season around, he said that day. Flipped the switch.
He took flak for saying that, with the team at 3-5. But then came a confident win against Utah, a dominant dismantling of Dartmouth.
“Those comments I made after Maryland,” Tiffany said Saturday, “I really meant them.”
He saw it on the field in College Park. He has seen it in practice and on the field since.
“There’s something that I’ve seen with this team grow in the last couple weeks,” Tiffany said. “A belief is growing.”
That was the messaging all week, Hausmann said. That the team’s talent, its potential, so unharnessed, eventually would coalesce. Virginia was as powerful as any team in the country. Including the one topping the rankings.
“Now, the challenge is, okay, we just had our first big win of the season,” Tiffany said. “How do we handle that?”
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