UVa, Duke face off

According to Wikipedia, the law of averages is “a lay term used to express a belief that outcomes of a random event shall even out within a small sample.”

Virginia coach Dom Starsia is hoping like heck that the law kicks in this evening for his team when it takes on Duke in the semifinals of the ACC tournament.

UVa has dropped six straight games to the Blue Devils dating back to 2004.

“My hope is that I’ll still be working at Virginia the next time we beat Duke,” joked Starsia. “We have such a great senior class and it’s been a little confounding and a little frustrating at the same time. I told somebody after the last game that we’ll beat them when we deserve to beat them.”

Duke beat Virginia, 15-10, at home on April 11. It was Virginia’s first and only loss of the season.

“We were just a little impatient offensively and didn’t shoot great,” said Starsia, whose team bounced back with an impressive home win over Dartmouth in its regular-season finale last Saturday. “As we failed to score some goals, I thought we got a little more impatient as the game wore on.”

Most of Virginia’s struggles, however, came on the defensive end.

“We let them get behind us for too many easy goals,” Starsia said. “We didn’t give Adam [Ghitelman] a chance to help us in the goal at all.

“We have to tighten up in the unsettled game and not let them get in behind us…we were just a step slow and a dollar short at that end the whole day.”

Ground balls

Virginia had four players selected to the All-ACC first team on Thursday, the most of any school. Senior attackman Danny Glading,  junior midfielder Brian Carroll, senior longstick midfielder Mike Timms and sophomore midfielder Shamel Bratton were all named to the first team. ... Starsia was voted ACC coach of the year for a record eighth time, while freshman attackman Steele Stanwick was selected as rookie of the year. Duke attackman Ned Crotty was named player of the year.