Big Red, big rout

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Nobody could have predicted the dominance that Virginia displayed in its first two games of the NCAA tournament.

Conversely, nobody could have predicted what happened on Saturday afternoon at Gillette Stadium.

As in sync as the Cavaliers were in wins over Villanova and Johns Hopkins, they were as discombobulated against Cornell.

In the tournament semifinals, No. 1 seed Virginia was completely outplayed by the fifth-seeded Big Red. Cornell, behind great defense and a surprising flurry of offensive firepower, shocked UVa, 15-6, to advance to the championship game on Monday against Syracuse.

Cornell (12-3) will be making its first final appearance since 1988, when it also beat the Cavs along the way to the final. The Big Red’s 15 goals were the most that Virginia had allowed in an NCAA tournament game since 2001.

“I’m at a little bit of a loss to explain what happened to us today,” said Virginia coach Dom Starsia. “I thought we were well prepared coming into the game. We had a couple of good days of practice.

“We just seemed a little gassed early and Cornell was clearly carrying the play to us. The big rock started rolling down the hill and we couldn’t get our arms around it.”

Cornell had more goals in the first half (eight) than it had the entire game against Princeton (six) in last weekend’s quarterfinals.

The Big Red (13-3) received three goals apiece from Rob Pannell, Ryan Hurley and Chris Finn. Eight players scored.

Cornell outshot Virginia, 37-27, and won the ground ball battle, 32-20.

“We had been so sharp the last couple of weeks,” Starsia said. “It just seemed like we didn’t have any energy today…we just seemed almost incapable of making a pass offensively. There just wasn’t enough urgency.”

For the second straight season, Virginia’s NCAA title hopes ended in the semifinals at Gillette Stadium. After the game, in the locker room, many UVa players appeared to be weeping.

“This has been an epic year in our program,” Starsia said. “I thought the kids did a great all year. I apologized to the team on the field for not doing a good enough job of preparing them to play today.

“They’ve distinguished themselves in so many ways this year. It’s just a shame that this is how our season ended.”

Really, the game was like a Mike Tyson fight from the 1980s. Virginia, playing the role of Michael Spinks, was bombarded from the opening whistle.

Before the Cavaliers knew what hit them, Cornell had raced out to a 3-0 lead.

A Danny Glading goal trimmed the margin to 3-1, but Cornell answered with three consecutive goals to take a 6-1 lead.

After a Shamel Bratton goal made it 6-2, Cornell answered with two goals to lead 8-2 at halftime. For one 17-minute and 32-second stretch in the first half, UVa was scoreless.

“We missed some of the early chances that we had and Cornell did a really good job on groundballs and faceoffs,” said Glading, who, with teammate Steele Stanwick, paced Virginia with two goals, “so we didn’t see the ball very often on offense and when we did, we didn’t have the patience.”

Cornell goalie Jake Myers, a San Diego native who transferred from Syracuse, was steady. When the second half began, Myers calmly turned away a blistering shot from the wing by Bratton.

The save kept the Big Red’s momentum going. Finn and Hurley answered with goals.

Everyone in attendance kept expecting Virginia to make one of its patented runs, but it never came. In fact, UVa didn’t score consecutive goals all game.

“Every time we got a goal, they just answered right back,” Stanwick said. “They did a great job. They’re a great team. That’s what great teams do — they answer back.”

In the regular season, Virginia had defeated Cornell in Charlottesville, somewhat routinely, 14-10.

Many pundits already had UVa penciled into the finals against Syracuse, which had upset Duke in the first semifinal.

“I don’t think we were looking ahead,” Glading said. “We knew Cornell was a great team and had a great senior class.

“We were ready to play. We just didn’t play.”

Added fifth-year senior Mike Timms: “They did what we thought they would do. They just did it better than they had been doing it.”