You may call it viewing the glass half- empty, but the Virginia field hockey team thinks it's just making sure it's prepared.
Although the No. 10 Cavaliers (10-5) came off the University Hall Turf Field last night with a 5-0 shutout over in-state opponent Radford (2-13), the last thing they did was celebrate. Instead, they began to focus on improvements they need to make for Sunday's showdown against No. 4 Wake Forest.
Though she scored two goals, junior midfielder Jessica Coleman said she played only "okay" and her team needed to make changes if it was going to play well against Wake Forest.
"There are things we're going to have to fix, things that we did tonight that we won't be able to do and we won't be successful with on Sunday," Coleman said. "I think we did fine against the team we were playing against, but we're going to have to pick it up a very large level for Sunday."
Added Virginia coach Jessica Wilk: "We finished a little better, but we still need to continue to work on finishing. We passed well, for the most part, but we need to take a little bit better care of the ball. Defensively, we need to tighten it up before we play Wake Forest."
The Cavs had little reason to be disappointed, however. They dominated the Highlanders throughout the game. Virginia garnered seven penalty corner opportunities to Radford's three and 21 shots to Radford's five. The Cavalier defense held the Highlanders without a shot in the second half. In all, Virginia keepers Becky Worthington and Emily White needed to make only three saves between them to record the Cavs' seventh shutout of the year.
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On the offensive side, a number of Cavs got into the action. Senior forward Lorraine Vizzuso matched Coleman with a pair of goals. Sophomore back Kelli Hill also scored a goal, her second of the season. Junior midfielder Carrie Goodloe assisted on two goals, while junior back Mason White assisted on one.
Virginia entered halftime with a 3-0 lead. Less than five minutes into the game, Vizzuso scored the goal that would stand up as the game-winner. After that, the Cavaliers entered a 17-minute drought that Coleman ended with her first goal. A little more than a minute later, Vizzuso tallied her second goal off Goodloe's assist.
"We got off to a much better start than I thought we would," Wilk said. "We did a good job of making some corrections and improving our play as we went along. That was important in terms of building for Saturday."
Virginia also got off to a quick start in the second half and scoring its next two goals in the first five minutes. After the 30-minute mark, however, play stagnated as a number of the Cavalier reserves saw playing time. The final score remained at 5-0.
Coleman's two goals moved her into the eighth place on Virginia's all-time scoring chart, while Goodloe's pair of assists put her in the top five in career assists with 34. With her two goals, Vizzuso is now seventh all-time on Virginia's goals list.
While there is much to celebrate, there is always much to correct as well.
"Overall, I'm happy with [the game]," Coleman said. "But like I said, we're going to have to improve our play in order to compete with Wake Forest"
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