The No. 9 Virginia women's lacrosse team will take on No. 13 Richmond tonight.
The match will mark the 30th time the Cavaliers and Spiders have faced off against each other, while Virginia (1-0, 1-0 ACC) leads the all-time series with a record of 26-2-1.
Last year, however, Richmond handed the squad its first loss of the season in a 7-8 defeat.
"Richmond's a really big game," senior defender and co-captain Jessy Morgan said. "We've probably been looking forward to it since last year when we lost to them. That loss was huge. This year we really want to give a little payback for what happened last year."
The 3-1 Spiders recently suffered a loss to the Duke Blue Devils, ranked No. 2, but that has not stained their reputation at all.
Not only did Richmond win the Atlantic 10 Championship for the second consecutive time last season, but two Spiders, and sisters, Mandy and Ashley Friend, were named pre-season All-Americans for this season.
"Obviously, we started with Virginia Tech and to limit a team to two goals over the course of 60 minutes I think is a great way to start a season, so we're excited about that," Virginia coach Julie Myers. "But we certainly know there's a lot of work ahead of us. Richmond is a very good team, and is probably a couple steps better this year than they were last year, so they have our attention."
One thing Virginia will need to concentrate on in the match is how to stop the Spiders' offense.
"They've got three key attackers that a lot of their plays run through, and they love the one-on-one, and that's really hard to stop for a defensive team," Myers said. "We're going to really have to be sure that we slow them down, force them into bad angles and outside shots. There's going to be a lot of double teams and a lot of communication on the defensive part. From the offensive part, we'll have to be pretty smart with our ball movement and times to go in and challenge. Their defense is going to collapse on the ball pretty quickly so we're going to need to make sure we really move the ball before we really go in."
What is going to fuel the fire inside the players though is not only the vengeance they want to take on Richmond, but also that need to get on the field and play the game. After having to postpone last week's match against Temple, which is now rescheduled to be played March 7 in Philadelphia, the Cavaliers have only played one game so far this entire season whereas other teams have played as many as four or five.
"We're all very much looking forward to the game," senior midfielder and co-captain Jess Wasilewski said. "We're excited, we're anxious, we're just really looking forward to going out, playing hard, and beating them. We just need to do everything within ourselves in order to win [tomorrow.]"
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