Virginia carried a 3-1 lead into the last eight minutes of its game against Queens on Tuesday. Then the visiting Royals scored. Five minutes later, Virginia answered, and 36 seconds after that, Queens scored again.
All hell was breaking loose and yet everything, for Virginia, was crystallizing.
The Cavaliers (5-5-1, 2-2 ACC) ended up beating the Royals (3-6-2, 2-1-2 ASUN) 4-3, lodging critical points in a rollercoaster campaign. But there may not be a more apt microcosm of their situation than the ending Tuesday at Klöckner Stadium — for good and bad.
“I’m happy that at the end we pulled it out for a win,” fourth-year midfielder Brendan Lambe said. “It’s not the scoreline you really want. You’d rather it be 4-1 instead of 4-3.”
Things looked rosier at the start, when third-year forward Arnold Matshazi, making his first start back from injury, opened the scoring in the sixth minute. Queens equalized a minute later. But second-year defender Zachary Ehrenpreis headed in a second in the 17th minute, and Lambe, who assisted the first two goals, hammered in a third in the 21st minute.
Virginia scored twice more before halftime. Before the wild ending, the Cavaliers spent 62 minutes sitting on a 3-1 lead. Coach George Gelnovatch, employing another limited bench to “make sure we win this game,” was preparing a raft of substitutions. He ended up having to go the other way, putting starters back in.
All three of the Royals’ goals came the same way.
“It’s balls into our penalty area,” Gelnovatch said. “It’s all it is.”
This is not a new phenomenon.
“Every goal is just balls, and they’re not even great balls,” Gelnovatch said. “They’re balls just kind of put into the box, usually with numbers.”
Queens’ first goal came on a free kick from near half-field, arced toward the back post — a Queens head, a stabbing Virginia foot, then the ball looping off the crossbar and into the goal. The second goal was another ball in, not dealt with, and thundered home.
“It’s not a fundamental breakdown of our defensive shape, where they’re bopping it around and runners in the box and cutbacks and side foots on the ball,” Gelnovatch said. “The balls are just floated into the box, pinballing around, and they’re getting on the end of it.”
This has been the team’s scourge all season — funky goals, surprising given the personnel. Virginia’s 3-5-2 formation is anchored by fifth-year Sebastian Pop and second-year Zach Ehrenpreis, two of the most imposing defenders in college soccer.
It is especially frustrating for Virginia because of how good the team has been going forward. Virginia strung together a handful of nice sequences and hogged 58 percent of the possession, with 12 corners to Queens’ three.
Matshazi’s opener came after third-year midfielder Alex Parvu beat a man down the right flank. Lambe and fourth-year midfielder Marco Dos Santos worked the ball on the edge of the penalty area before crossing to a wide open Ehrenpreis on the back post for the second. Lambe mustered a bit of magic for the third, sidling past three players in the center of the field and banging in a goal — again after sustained possession.
And fourth-year forward AJ Smith, who has been Virginia’s goal-scoring engine all season, now having scored six goals, interchanged with Tandjigora — a cool, composed counter — before slotting home for the fourth.
“We’ve got full control, we’re doing all the hard things, creating chances, penalty areas,” Gelnovatch said. “We’re scoring goals. We’re scoring three goals. We’re scoring four goals, and it is not easy to score four goals on a team.”
It is just that defending. These are second chances, the fifty-fifty moments waiting for somebody to grab them. Easy to diagnose and impossible to find a quick fix for.
“It’s always knockdowns, right?” Gelnovatch said. “Which sometimes is hard to coach because it’s so unpredictable. But when it’s happened to us this much, there’s something to it. A lot of it’s mentality.”
Gelnovatch started first-year defender Isaac Mwakutuya in the third centerback role. In the past two weeks, that role has alternated between Mwakutuya and third-year Jed Akwaboah. Mwakutuya starts when Virginia is planning on going forward more — Akwaboah in more defensive games.
But this is not a personnel issue.
The game ended when Dos Santos rebuffed a last cross by Queens. That was the end of the game and the start of yet another reckoning focused on funky goals.
As the buzzer sounded, a jolly voice boomed the news that Gelnovatch had just won his 400th game. He really did not care much. As the news has come closer, he has reflected on his time here.
“But to be honest, we’re 5-5. So I’m a little bit more concerned,” Gelnovatch said. “Four hundred wins. I don’t give a damn. We’re one game at a time, one game at a time.”
He digressed, again, to the team. The game left Gelnovatch lamenting into the chilly night sky.
“If we can get better at the things that I'm talking about, we have a damn good team,” Gelnovatch said. “If we can just get better at that, and that's easy to get better at. The part that we're really good at is hard, really hard. We just got to get better at that, and we will.”
Michael Liebermann is a senior associate on the sports desk and formerly served as a sports editor for the 136th term of The Cavalier Daily. He is a fourth-year College student, majoring in English in the literary prose concentration. Michael is from Westfield, N.J., and enjoys writing about men’s soccer, basketball and lacrosse. Outside of The Cavalier Daily, Michael is involved in Men’s Club Soccer and the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.
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