What We Learned From Virginia's Dominant Season-Opening Win Over Michigan
The 2024 Virginia men's lacrosse season went off with a bang on Saturday, as the Cavaliers dispatched the 11th-ranked Michigan Wolverines with ease, coming away with a dominant 19-11 victory. With one game in the books, let's take a look at what we learned about Lars Tiffany's Cavaliers in their first game of the season.
No Petey, no problem?
One of the biggest question marks facing Virginia in 2024 was the state of its faceoff unit, as for the first time since 2019, the Cavaliers started a season without Petey LaSalla, the program's all-time leader in faceoff wins and ground balls. UVA did some quality work in the transfer portal, adding three faceoff specialists, but the strength and quality of the position group remained quite uncertain heading into the start of the season. Lars Tiffany had tempered his expectations for the unit in the opener, as Virginia faced Michigan's Justin Wietfeldt, one of the best faceoff men in the country. Tiffany was blown away by the outcome of that facet of the game. Navy transfer Anthony Ghobriel went 15/23 and Colgate transfer Thomas Colucci went 6/8, giving Virginia's dangerous offense a pivotal possession advantage as the Cavaliers won the faceoff battle 21-11 overall. It's only one game, but the post-Petey LaSalla era of faceoffs at Virginia might just be okay.
Strong start for Virginia's defense.
Rivaling the uncertainty of the faceoff position were questions regarding UVA's defensive unit, which saw the departures of Cade Saustad, Quentin Matsui, Scott Bower, Grayson Sallade, Evan Zinn, and others from last year's team. Cole Kastner is back, but Virginia didn't bring back much else in terms of experienced defenders. With that said, once again Tiffany was fairly pleased with the effort his defensive unit put forth in the opener against what should be a potent Michigan offense. 6'5" sophomore John Schroter dazzled in his UVA debut, using a couple of sweet over-the-head checks to record three caused turnovers as well as five ground balls and an assist on the game's first goal by Joey Terenzi. George Fulton caused two turnovers and collected four ground balls and Ben Wayer had five ground balls and a pole goal in his return to the field after sitting out the 2023 season. As a defense, Virginia had 13 caused turnovers and forced five failed clears by Michigan. With Noah Chizmar and Harvard transfer Chase Yager providing stability at the SSDM position, UVA's defense might not take that step back that some people were expecting.
No dropoff for the Virginia offense.
Speaking of taking a step back, there was some worry about the Cavalier offense taking one after losing a 60-goal scorer in Xander Dickson as well as Thomas McConvey, Jeff Conner, and Peter Garno, not to mention offensive mastermind Sean Kirwan, who left to become to head coach at Dartmouth. But Virginia's offense didn't miss a beat in the opener, despite a rough shooting night from its best player as Connor Shellenberger had two goals on 13 shots. Payton Cormier had an assist and five goals, leaving him one off of Virginia's all-time scoring record. Star freshman McCabe Millon stole the show with five goals, including a high-flying crease dive goal. Tufts transfer and 2023 Division III Player of the Year Jack Boyden had five points in his Cavalier debut on three assists and two highlight reel goals.
Virginia's offensive scheme was highly effective, routinely dicing up the Michigan defense with pick plays throughout the game. Lars Tiffany gave new offensive coordinator Kevin Cassese a shoutout after the game for drawing up the backdoor play that led to Ryan Colsey's first-career goal. It seems Cassese is enjoying working with UVA's many offensive weapons and based on the first game, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Solid start to the junior campaign of Matthew Nunes.
A starter since the first game of his freshman season, Nunes has made steady, significant progress over the course of his career in cage. After coming in just under 50% (.498) as a freshman, Nunes bumped his save percentage up to .529 last season and started his junior year with a good showing, posting 13 saves and 10 goals allowed for a .565 save percentage. His first half was brilliant, recording eight saves and only three goals allowed, two of which were on Michigan man-up opportunities.
There has been substantial growth in other areas as well for Nunes, including his ability to call the defense from the crease, which is particularly important this season as Virginia starts a relatively inexperienced group of defenders. He intercepted a couple of crease passes for caused turnovers and delivered a few beautiful long clearing passes, including an assist on McCabe Millon's highlight crease dive goal.
This is a tough, physical team.
In the week before the season opener, Lars Tiffany talked about the improvements he saw during the preseason scrimmages in terms of the toughness and physicality his team displayed on the field. Outside of detailed execution of plays and strategies, playing hard is a pivotal aspect of who comes out on top in any given lacrosse game and Tiffany wants this team to win that part of the game every time.
Perhaps with some slightly taken out of context quotes from Michigan head coach Kevin Conry as motivation, Virginia made a statement in all phases against the Wolverines. The defense was ferocious, with lots of physical play to the bodies of the Michigan attackmen and lots of caused turnovers. UVA was better going after the 50-50 balls, boasting a 44-31 advantage in groundballs in addition to the aforementioned 21-11 edge in faceoffs. On offense, Virginia wasn't afraid to get hit on some very effective picks and Michigan's defenders delivered some tough hits on UVA's attackmen, but usually not until after those attackmen had scored goals. The Wolverines should still be a very good team capable of competing at the top of the Big Ten, but the Cavaliers were better and wanted it more on Saturday and it showed. Not many teams are going to be able to beat the Hoos when they bring the energy like that.
No. 3 Virginia will play its first road game of the season on Saturday against an in-state foe and another ranked opponent at No. 17 Richmond on Saturday. Opening faceoff is set for 1pm on ESPN+.
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