What is it they call him? Listen to it now, under the sun at American Legion Memorial Stadium. His name gets called for the ACC All-Tournament Team.
There go the teammates.
“He’s a good kid!”
“What a good kid!”
This is the joke about freshman attackman Brendan Millon. He’s so young, isn’t he, just a freshman. And he’s the younger brother, too. Two years behind junior attackman McCabe Millon.
Blame junior goalie Colin Hook. Or congratulate him, for spearheading a moniker that has stuck. How could it not, with their coach saying things like this? Calling Brendan, as Coach Lars Tiffany did at his media availability Tuesday, “a sweetheart of a young man, and he’s as humble as humble pie can be.”
McCabe enjoys the bit. He got asked about it at media availability Tuesday, and there was some brotherly affection in there. He smiled.
“Oh, that’s a great, great thing that we got going,” McCabe said. “I like that one. He is a good kid.”
They all say it. What they don’t have to say is that the good kid is one of the filthiest lacrosse players in the country.
There are 48 pairs of brothers — including a few trios — on the same team this season in Division I men’s lacrosse. There are none as crushingly effective as Brendan and McCabe Millon. In fact, there may not be a pair of attackmen on the same team, blood or not, as crushingly effective.
Brendan came to Grounds this year from the McDonogh School outside Baltimore as the consensus No. 1 recruit. McCabe arrived two years ago, after graduating McDonogh as his class’s No. 2 recruit. In his freshman year in 2024, he set a program record for goals by a freshman and led all freshmen in total goals and points. He scored five goals in his college debut and tallied six points in a dramatic double overtime win against Johns Hopkins in the NCAA quarterfinals.
When it was time for Brendan to decide, McCabe was never proscriptive, even though he had talked to all the same schools, faced all the same decisions. He let his younger brother feel it out.
Brendan tried to approach the situation in a vacuum, he has said. But he ended up following his older brother. This season, McCabe leads the ACC in assists. Brendan leads the ACC in points.
Before the ACC Tournament, Brendan was named ACC Freshman of the Year. He registered five points in the season opener against Colgate, and against Dartmouth he tallied 10 points — the first Virginia player to do so since Connor Shellenberger in 2024. He scored the eventual game-winner in the game that turned Virginia’s season around, against Notre Dame.
“Half the time he scores, I look at the defense like, ‘How did he just do that?’” graduate goalie Jake Marek said. “We're like, ‘We have no idea.’ So it's so fun watching him play and him playing with his brother. They're so good.”
McCabe has been playing his best lacrosse this season, freed from much of the pressure he faced last year — pressure to build on an explosive freshman campaign, to replace the departed Shellenberger. The numbers still looked fancy — 50 points in 14 games — but there were also the 38 turnovers in 14 games, and an offense that sputtered behind his role as a quarterback.
McCabe was putting too much on his own shoulders, Tiffany thought. Felt like he had to do too much. And maybe he was trying too hard, despite what he said, to fill the shoes of Shellenberger, maybe the best lacrosse player in the world. This season, though, Tiffany said that McCabe has learned to trust his teammates.
“The difference from McCabe Millon a year ago is he is getting everyone involved in the game,” Tiffany said. “The way he’s been balancing his ability to dodge and then find teammates and move the ball and then pull the trigger himself at times, it’s what’s really making our offense.”
McCabe still draws every team’s top defenseman, and even still he had six points in the ACC Tournament final against North Carolina. He is growing as a player, and also as a leader.
“He speaks up in our team meetings so much, sharing great advice with younger guys,” senior defenseman John Schroter said. “His voice, his presence, it gives us all so much confidence. McCabe has been absolutely unbelievable this year. Unbelievable.”
Brendan’s presence has opened things up for McCabe. For the whole offense. For Truitt Sunderland, too, the attackman having a breakout season in his senior year.
Sunderland was often forced to play behind the goal last season, and this year, with Brendan — “the best X attackman in the country,” Sunderland said — the senior has shifted to a more natural role. He has 49 goals and 18 assists.
“Having Brendan has just unlocked so much,” Sunderland said. “It takes some weight off McCabe’s shoulders. And all of a sudden teams are forgetting about [senior attackman Ryan] Colsey, and same with [sophomore midfielder Ryan] Duenkel.”
The older brother, though, is still the older brother. He made the top 25 list for the Tewaaraton Award. Brendan, to some consternation, missed out.
Tiffany was unbothered by that. Brendan, he said, is just a freshman. Lacrosse IQ, Brendan’s biggest attribute, is not going anywhere, and he has evolved as a dodger, using an arsenal of deceptive moves.
“He’s a killer,” Marek said after the ACC Tournament final. “No one can stop him. He has eyes in the back of his head. It’s unreal watching him play.”
Marek stood outside the locker room saying this, wearing an ACC Tournament Champions t-shirt. He paused and grinned.
“He’s one of the best kids in the country, and he’s just a good kid,” Marek said.
Tuesday, there was a strange sight at a red light on Copeley Road. A guy leaving the athletic facilities sat on a moped, and on his head was a blue-and-orange lacrosse helmet.
A half hour after that red light turned green, McCabe talked to the media, explaining that the team had just received their tournament helmets. They had been allowed to bring home an old helmet. Brendan, it turned out, had worn his home.
“A little bit easier to carry — and safer, hopefully,” McCabe said.
He smiled again.
“But, yeah, he’s a bit of a clown.”
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