UVa dominant in first round

Seventeen days had passed since the Virginia men’s lacrosse team stepped on the field for a game. That outcome was an 11-goal loss to Duke in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament.
When you consider that UVa’s two preceding games (against Dartmouth and Duke) weren’t anything to write home about, really it had been over a month since the Cavaliers had a performance that they could feel good about.
“We’d been a little frustrated I think,” said Virginia coach Dom Starsia. “People would ask about the Duke games and I didn’t have answers in every case.
“Even in the Dartmouth game, it took us a while to get our hands on that game…”
On Sunday afternoon at Klockner Stadium, Virginia put those performances in its rearview mirror with one of its most dominating efforts of the season.
Behind five goals from Brian Carroll, four from Danny Glading and three apiece from Steele Stanwick and John Haldy, No. 1-seeded UVa (14-2) pounded Villanova, 18-6, in front of a crowd of 2,921. The 12-goal margin of victory matched UVa’s largest in the NCAA tournament since a 20-8 triumph over Georgetown in 2006.
“It’s definitely a confidence booster for us since we hadn’t been playing our best lacrosse,” Glading said, “[but] you really have to take one game at a time and we’re going to prepare just as hard and as diligently as we did this past week.
“It’s nice to be No. 1, but it’s anybody’s tournament. Whoever comes out ready to play is going to win these games.”
With the win, Virginia advanced to an NCAA Tournament quarterfinal showdown against Johns Hopkins in Annapolis, Md. on Sunday. Earlier this season, UVa
defeated the Blue Jays in Baltimore in a 16-15 thriller.
Virginia’s nine first-quarter goals were nearly double the amount that it scored in its 16-5 loss to Duke on April 24.
“I was glad we got off to a great start,” Starsia said. “I thought that was important because I’ve had some questions over the last couple of days about our confidence. You never quite know about that, so I thought it was important today that we got after it at the beginning. We clearly did.”
Virginia led 15-0 at the half and 18-0 at the end of three quarters. Villanova (11-6) didn’t get on the scoreboard until 8 minutes and 45 seconds remained in the fourth quarter as Tim Driscoll scored on an assist from Chris MacDonald. But, by that time, several sympathetic Virginia fans seemed almost pleased that the Wildcats had gotten off the snide.
The Cavaliers looked like a well-oiled machine in the first quarter. After being held scoreless for the first 4-plus minutes, Virginia exploded, scoring nine goals within the last 10:39 of the stanza. Villanova, making its first-ever NCAA appearance, looked shell-shocked.
“We’re obviously a little disappointed with the way we played today,” said Villanova coach Michael Corrado. “We knew Virginia was going to be a great test for our team.
“We came out and got a couple opportunities early and didn’t score, and then all of a sudden it was just an avalanche.”
Starsia said his team’s degree of dominance was a bit of a surprise.
“The game didn’t play quite the way we expected it to,” he said, “but I’m really proud of the team and the effort we put out.
“I thought we had been served a pretty significant piece of humble pie that we had to live with for the last couple weeks. I thought it was important for us to get back to the practice field.
“I give the older guys credit for making sure we were ready to play today.”
Carroll, the game’s high scorer, believes the team may have turned a corner.
“Against Duke we were settling for shots that might not have been the best shots,” Carroll said. “We were rushing things on offense.
“Today we were patient. We moved the ball around and pretty much all the shots we took were good shots.”
Groundballs
Virginia outshot Villanova, 42-27, and won the groundball battle, 46-37. …Seven players scored for UVa.