When the No. 3 Virginia men's lacrosse team takes on North Carolina Saturday, it'll get a glimpse of where it stood as a team at this stage last year.
When the two teams met last season in Chapel Hill, North Carolina had a 5-3 record and NCAA aspirations. Virginia entered that game with a 3-5 record, mired in its worst season in over a decade. Thanks to two goals and an assist from Tar Heel attackman Scott Falatach, Carolina won that game 11-9. When the teams met two weeks later in the ACC tournament, Virginia upstaged the Heels by the identical score.
This year, with a 2-6 record on the season, North Carolina's only hope to get into the NCAA tournament is to win back-to-back games when the ACC tournament is held in Baltimore later this month.
Their season essentially over, the Tar Heels now will look to spoil everyone else's postseason hopes. Even though the Heels sport a record four games under .500, they lost to No. 1 Johns Hopkins 7-5 a week ago.
Playing with nothing to lose, Carolina could be extremely dangerous to a Virginia team looking to earn the No. 1 seed for the ACC tournament.
To knock off the Cavaliers, UNC will have to find a way to penetrate Virginia's defense. Last week against Maryland, the combination of defensemen Michael Culver, Steve Holmes and Ricky Smith held the Maryland All-American Joe Walters to one extra-man goal. Virginia's strategy included switching to zone defense and keeping Culver on Walters throughout the game. The defense will need to have a similar effort to shut down North Carolina's senior ace Jed Prossner.
Prossner, a returning first team All-American attackman, has scored 26 points on the season and definitely has caught the eye of the Virginia defense.
"We're going to try to limit him to what he can do against our defense," sophomore Virginia goalie Kip Turner said. "We've got to go to him early because we know he's such a good player. He's a threat all over the field."
Prossner is not Carolina's only offensive threat. In fact, UNC has a trio of attackmen capable of taking over a game offensively. Junior Ryan Blair (26 points) and senior Mike McCall (23 points) both force opposing defenses to guard each of them one-on-one, instead of doubling up on Prossner.
In last week's victory, the Virginia offense played one of its best games of the season with eight different players scoring goals.
For junior midfielder Jared Little, it's clear what Virginia must do to maintain the same level of offensive excellence.
The Cavaliers need to "continue to play well together," Little said. "[We need] to just make sure that the middies can draw slides and get the ball to the attack, and the attack can continue to score and feed the middies for goals."
With a game at undefeated No. 2 Duke a week away, the Cavaliers can't afford to look ahead. Instead, they must focus on beating a North Carolina team hungry to bring the Cavaliers down to their level.
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