MEN’S LACROSSE: Duke gets past UVa

Last May, the Virginia women’s lacrosse team pulled off the greatest comeback in the history of the sport when it overcame a nine-goal deficit to defeat Duke in the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament.
Nearly a year later, on an overcast Sunday at Klockner Stadium, the UVa men tried to pull off a similar feat.
However, the Wahoos came up short.
Duke, behind three goals from Matt Danowski and stellar play in goal from tournament MVP Dan Loftus, held off a late rally and downed UVa, 11-9, in front of a crowd of 3,758.
“We didn’t play well enough to beat Duke today,” said Virginia coach Dom Starsia, “but there are a lot of things in these type of situations where you say, ‘I am proud of my team.’
“I clearly am proud of our effort in the last 20 minutes, but we also needed to be smarter for 60 minutes and we
didn’t quite have the goods early.”
Sunday’s game was a polar opposite of the April 12 meeting at Klockner Stadium. In that contest, Virginia (12-3) went to-to-toe with Duke until the Blue Devils took over in the
second half.
This time, UVa started the game sluggishly and then came on at the end.
“We have to put a whole game together,” said Virginia senior Peter Lamade, a former Duke player. “You’re not going to beat that team playing one half of lacrosse.
“They go on runs and you can’t play just one half against them.”
Brian Carroll gave Virginia a 1-0 lead less than four minutes in, but it was downhill for the Cavaliers from there.
An errant clearing pass from defender Ken Clausen went right to the Blue Devils’ Brad Ross, who scored on an empty net. Top-seeded Duke (15-1) went on to score five unanswered goals and take a 6-1 lead. The Blue Devils led 7-3 at the half.
“We looked a little bit in awe during the first 20 minutes,” Starsia said. “There was all this talk about Duke and the circumstances of [the game]. I thought we just stood around and gave them too many second-chance opportunities. The score should have been 3-2 or 4-2 at the half rather than 7-3.”
One of the reasons was the play of Loftus (17 saves), who made an array of spectacular stops that had Virginia players scratching their heads.
“I think our defense did a really good job of giving them poor-angle shots,” Loftus said, “and I was seeing the ball really well today.”
In the second half, Duke picked right up where it left off, scoring four more goals to take a commanding 11-3 lead with 6 minutes 36 seconds remaining in the third quarter.
The pro-Virginia crowd at Klockner Stadium seemed shocked — as did UVa players. However, the Cavs slowly began to peck away at the lead.
Ben Rubeor and Carroll scored back-to-back goals to cut the margin to 11-6 before freshman Rhamel Bratton scored at the 8:56 mark of the fourth quarter to make it 11-7.
Meanwhile, Virginia’s defense put the clamps on Duke’s high-octane attack. In addition, the Cavaliers started winning face-offs. They won 13 of 23 on the afternoon.
When Carroll and Rubeor scored within 10 seconds of each other to make it 11-9 with just under two minutes left, an air of hope returned to Klockner Stadium.
However, a few seconds later, an outlet pass from Petit to Bratton missed its mark, and Duke was able to run the clock out from there.
“We try and take something away from every game, win or lose,” Rubeor said. “I think we’ll learn more from our mistakes today than the things that we did well.
“We’ll go back and look at this game, but we have the playoffs coming up. We need to refocus and concentrate for our first-round game [on May 10].”
Groundballs
Virginia received a career-high 18 saves in the net from Bud Petit. …Petit, Rubeor, Garrett Billings and Danny Glading made the All-Tournament team.
Duke was represented by Loftus, Danowski, Zach Greer, Parker McKee, Ned Crotty, Max Quinzani, Tony McDevitt and Nick O’Hara.