Sophomore defender Victor Akoum started near midfield. He took one big touch forward and picked his head up. Space greeted him. He took another big touch forward and picked his head up again.
Then Akoum, watching the Syracuse defense sagging around him, finding himself somehow with an alley to shoot, dropped his head down for the final time. A meandering run became lethal.
Akoum sledgehammered a shot toward the near post. It went in, and 10 minutes into Saturday night’s game, the clobbering had begun. Virginia scored again in the 16th minute and once more in the 58th against a flagging Syracuse team that, to add insult to injury, went down a man after receiving a red card in the 66th minute. The Cavaliers (7-4-3, 3-2-2 ACC) beat the Orange (6-5-3, 1-3-2) 3-0. That is a kind scoreline.
“This win was a great win, from start to finish,” Coach George Gelnovatch said. “Scoring early, the way it played out, looked like we thought it would tactically. The guys executed.”
Syracuse Coach Ian McIntyre sat on his white plastic folding chair after the third goal, in his button-down shirt and orange tie, crossed one leg over another, and slouched sideways to confer with an assistant. He had no answers.
A surging team played a listless one Saturday night at Klockner Stadium, and the listless one never had a chance.
There’s just a liberating confidence about Virginia right now, deep into a win streak that no one saw coming. Saturday’s result marked five wins in a row, directly after six games without a win.
“We knew we were capable of winning five in a row,” junior defender Nick Dang said. “But then, at the same time, the results weren’t coming together.”
They are coming now, at a crucial time. NCAA Tournament hopes that once seemed to be slipping away now appear cemented. The win lifted Virginia to fifth in the ACC, with one conference matchup remaining Friday at 7 p.m. at No. 4 Pittsburgh.
It felt, from beginning to end, like a party. Senior Day festivities unrolled before the game. The bleachers rattled and the cheers cascading after goals. All the players leaned on each other and swayed and sang “The Good Old Song” after the match, and it felt like something big.
Just about everything went right. There was senior goalkeeper Joey Batrouni, sharp as always, dropping down to snag a tricky low shot, sidling over to palm away a near-post rocket, snuffing out a dangerous through ball.
There was freshman Joaquin Brizuela, tucking in a service from graduate midfielder Daniel Mangarov for the second goal and the first of his career. And there was Dang, the team’s leading scorer, finishing off a set piece for the third goal.
“I tried to just flick it on behind me with my head,” Dang said. “And it ended up falling right in front of me, and there was no one around me. So I just put it in the goal.”
The Orange looked shellshocked at the end. A couple minutes after most of them had retreated to the tunnel, four remained standing on the field. They were all in different spots, facing different directions and staring at nothing in particular with their hands on their hips. That looked about right.
Virginia and Syracuse have collided the last two seasons in the ACC Tournament, the Orange both times winning on penalty kicks. This felt personal.
Chippiness erupted early and lasted. Batrouni pointed an irate finger at an opponent after a collision, stopped from striding after him by only the referee’s strong finger in his chest. A minor scrum ignited in the 41st minute and landed Syracuse graduate midfielder Sam Layton a yellow card. Later on, Layton picked up a second yellow.
It hardly affected Virginia in a dominant performance.
“That’s impressive,” Gelnovatch said. “Not just for this, but for the run that we’re on and what we went through and where we are now.”
Gelnovatch could pat himself on the back more than a little bit. He and his coaches knew exactly how they wanted to break down the Orange.
Virginia plays with three center backs, and Syracuse with two forwards. The Orange, Gelnovatch explained, man mark everywhere else on the field. So bypassing those two forwards creates open acreage, room for someone to run into.
Akoum had zero career goals to his name before he unleashed the thunderbolt. Gelnovatch laughed when asked if he expected it.
“When he found himself driving the ball that deep, that was no surprise,” Gelnovatch said. “The fact that he finished like he did, a little bit of a surprise.”
It just felt fitting on a night where everything went right.
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