UVa ready for Maryland rematch

There’s a note that’s been sitting on Dom Starsia’s desk for almost two years, one of his keepsakes from the 2006 national lacrosse championship that Virginia won under his direction.
The note is from New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, congratulating Starsia and the Cavaliers on the great accomplishment. Belichick is a big lacrosse fan. In fact, he and UVa football coach Al Groh took in the game in Philadelphia, admiring the skills of the Cavalier players. Belichick’s son plays the sport at Rutgers.
It had to be a big thrill for Starsia and his players when Belichick came into the Virginia locker room after they knocked off Syracuse in the semifinals before going on to beat Massachusetts for the crown.
If that was exciting, just think of next weekend’s possibilities when the Patriots essentially host the national championships at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. More than 35,000 tickets have already been sold and it should be another big day for the ever-growing sport.
But, first things first.
Foxboro isn’t really on Starsia’s mind. Not that he hasn’t thought about it, but there’s an obstacle the Cavaliers have to overcome in order to make it to the Final Four. The obstacle is Maryland, Virginia’s opponent in the NCAA quarterfinals this Saturday at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis.
The high noon showdown between the Cavs and Terps will be the third meeting, the rubber match, and should be as rough-and-tumble a game as any fan could ask to see. Maryland won the first match and physically took it to the Cavaliers. Virginia made that a point of emphasis for the rematch and beat the Terps in the ACC semifinals here.
This time, the winner goes to the Final Four.
Maybe it’s because lacrosse season begins in the shadow of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, or maybe it’s because there may be more major colleges playing the game as a club sport because of the effects of Title IX. Whatever the reason, the sporting public - at least the part of it that pays attention to lacrosse - really doesn’t start paying attention until about now.
“In our sport there’s such a disproportionate amount of attention paid to the last 10 days of the season,” Starsia said Thursday. “For a program like ours and a couple of others that come to mind, it’s really important for us to be playing at this time of the year.”
Virginia is considered one of the perennial powers in the sport of lacrosse, along with Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, and arguably a few others. If those schools don’t make it to the Final Four almost every year, then it simply wasn’t a year to remember. Anything less just isn’t worth mentioning.
“I think you’re allowed to be content to get to the Final Four,” Starsia said. “That doesn’t mean that you’re done or satisfied completely. But it would be hard to suggest you haven’t had a good season if you reached that point at the end of a long year.”
That’s why last season was one Wahoo fans don’t care to remember. Coming off the 2006 national title, then losing in the first round in ’07 to Delaware on UVa’s own field just didn’t cut it.
Perhaps that created even more pressure on the veteran Virginia coach and the players last weekend when they hosted Maryland-Baltimore County, a better team than the Delaware squad that pulled off the upset a year ago. The Cavs outlasted UMBC in a dogfight to move on to the Maryland showdown this weekend.
“Somebody asked me how I felt after the UMBC game and frankly it was a relief,” Starsia said. “That was the word I would use.”
Now it’s the Terps that stand in the way of a level of contentment. Navy officials expect between 20,000 and 25,000 fans to jam their stadium on Saturday afternoon for the doubleheader (Navy and Johns Hopkins play in the second game).
“You win in the quarterfinals and you got to the Final Four and there’s a certain contentment that you’re going to keep playing until the final weekend,” Starsia said. “That’s quite meaningful.”
But it only whets the taste for more.
“You get that close and you want to win it all. Those opportunities are precious and you’ve got to try to take advantage of them when they happen,” Starsia said. “In our sport if you can play through the last weekend, I think you can feel you have accomplished something.”
If you don’t, you have to sit and chew on the loss and wait for another chance, just like the Cavaliers have done for the past year.
They didn’t like the taste.