Starsia and company get back on track

For more than two weeks, Virginia lacrosse coach Dom Starsia and his crew have had to chew on their worst performance of the season, a 16-5 thrashing at the hands of nemesis Duke in the ACC tournament.
The fact it was UVa’s seventh consecutive loss to the Blue Devils was bad enough. A lopsided score was salt in the wound.
About the only thing the Cavaliers could do about it was go back to the drawing board and attempt to figure out what went wrong. Virginia, though 13-2 at that point and seeded the No. 1 team in the NCAA Tournament, had tailed off at the end of the season and Starsia had to inspect the process a little closer.
Back to basics
Some of the team’s wins later in the season required come-from-behind performances and the team’s shooting percentage had dipped under 30 percent.
Defensively, something just wasn’t right.
Still, when Starsia put his team under the microscope, the answers he sought weren’t that complicated. During the two-week exam period and no opponent to take out the frustration on, Starsia allowed the team to pound on one another a bit more than usual and came up with a plan for postseason.
The Hall of Fame coach’s plan wasn’t anything complicated. Rather, it was as simple as well water.
“It was a return to fundamental execution,” said a more pleased Starsia after Sunday’s 18-6 rout of visiting Villanova in the first round of the NCAAs at Klockner Stadium. “It wasn’t any fancier than that.”
He had noticed that later in the season his team had become impatient on the offensive end and lost its poise. Defensively, the team wasn’t giving goalie Adam Ghitelman all the help he needed.
A balanced attack
Against the 16th-seeded Wildcats, Virginia seemed to have at least temporarily cured its woes. The Cavaliers bolted to a 9-0 first quarter lead that ballooned to 15-zip at the half and 18-0 after three quarters.
“I felt we just needed to play lacrosse at both ends of the field,” Starsia said. “There weren’t a lot of secrets. We had given up the ghost too quickly in [recent] games and started to settle for things.”
That wasn’t the case Sunday as UVa’s seniors, playing in their final home game, captured their school record 57th career victory.
Practices the past two weeks were a little away from the norm. Usually at this time of year, teams go a little lighter because of the wear and tear of the season.
Starsia went against the grain in order to gain his squad’s attention. They went first team defense against first team offense — a lot.
The work paid off.
“Today, we were patient,” said junior midfielder Brian Carroll, who scored a game-high five goals. “We moved the ball around and pretty much all the shots we took were good shots, which I think shows itself in the shooting percentage.”
Villanova was concerned about the Cavaliers’ attackmen and midfielders, an assortment of lethal weapons that lived up to their reputation on this day.
Meanwhile, the defense stepped it up to support Ghitelman in goal.
“In some recent games we haven’t given him enough of a chance to see the ball,” Starsia said. “That’s one of the things we spent time working on the past two weeks defensively, clamping down away from the ball and trying to minimize the quality of the shots Adam was seeing, so that you give him a chance to be a factor in the games.”
Ghitelman was solid from the beginning and Villanova didn’t start scoring until Starsia had called off the dogs and liberally substituted the final quarter of the cakewalk.
Things were a bit different at Klockner even before the rout began. Starsia changed up the pre-game routine a bit and he noticed in the locker room that his players were the most animated he had ever seen them prior to the contest.
“That doesn’t always manifest itself the way you think it’s going to ... it can be tricky sometimes,” the coach said. “But I will give our older guys credit for getting everyone ready to play.”
With a tournament win in their hip pockets, the Cavaliers’ focus now turns toward Johns Hopkins for an NCAA quarterfinals match next Sunday at the U.S. Naval Academy.
This one won’t require much tinkering by the head coach, just good, old-fashioned lacrosse. Exactly the way Starsia likes it.