After it all — the two goals in 19 seconds, the unplanned goalkeeper substitutions, the penalty kick that wasn’t, the frenzied final forays — it came down to this. To all 22 players smushed into one penalty area as the ball bounced around.
It came down to the final second, and a header floating toward goal. But there, stationed on the line, stood junior defender Nick Dang. He turned the ball away. The buzzer blared over the bedlam. That was it.
Dang sprinted away, arms aloft and shaking. He ran into one big communal hug. All anyone in that crush of bodies could do was lean on someone else and smile, too exhausted for anything more. That is because No. 9 seed Virginia had somehow beaten No. 8 seed North Carolina State, 2-1, to advance to the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.
Bonkers does not quite summarize it. But perhaps Coach George Gelnovatch dispatched a little prescience before the game, on Tuesday.
“We’re more determined than ever,” Gelnovatch said then. “I think there’s belief in the team.”
That helps explain what happened Wednesday night between the Cavaliers (9-5-3) and the Wolfpack (9-3-5) at Dail Soccer Field. It gushed out, the belief. It remained even as NC State junior Taig Healey scored in the 36th minute and even as senior goalkeeper Joey Batrouni exited at halftime with an apparent head injury. It remained even as the chances fizzled out in the second half.
In the 72nd minute, it calcified into something tangible. The equalizer looked vintage. It started with Dang intercepting a pass at midfield, then senior defender Paul Wiese swinging in one of his trademark crosses, the ones that loop and dip into precisely the right spot.
This one looped and dipped onto junior forward Triton Beauvois’s head. The net bulged a blink later and that was the first goal.
The second arrived 19 seconds later. This time Beauvois shepherded a pass across the box, to where junior forward David Okorie thumped it home.
“In the second half, we switched back to a more aggressive shape and probably caught them off guard,” Gelnovatch said. “And we were able to capitalize.”
The goals marked a pair of firsts. Beauvois scored his first goal of the season, two years and an ACL surgery since his last college goal on Oct. 18, 2022. Okorie, meanwhile, scored the first goal of his career. The heroics came from new places.
That included in goal, where Batrouni suffered what looked like a head injury midway through the first half, falling on his back after claiming a ball in the air. He finished the half but exited at halftime for graduate goalkeeper Tom Miles.
Injury also forced NC State to swap goalkeepers, but before the game. Graduate goalkeeper Enzo Carvalho suffered a tweak just minutes before kickoff, so in stepped junior Logan Erb. But if there existed a battle of the replacement goalkeepers, a clear winner emerged.
Miles came up huge for Virginia on multiple occasions. He dropped down to rebuff one low missile, the shot rocketing between a defender’s legs. He came up huge toward the end from point-blank range.
It seemed for a second like he might also have to face a penalty. NC State junior Aidan Payne, in the 82nd minute, collapsed in the box, and the whistle shrieked. The home fans erupted. But then they saw the referee marching toward Payne, brandishing a yellow card and pointing the other direction. Nobody, in fact, had touched Payne on his way down, and the official noticed.
Miles had not played all season until a couple weeks ago. But then, with Batrouni nursing a finger injury, Miles played the second half in Virginia’s last two games. Gelnovatch wanted to rest the injured finger. But he also wanted to give Miles some playing time.
“Gosh, in case, God forbid, something injury-wise happens with Joey, that [way] he has some experience,” Gelnovatch said Tuesday.
That thinking may just have proved crucial. It may just have helped deliver a massive win. Not only did the result push Virginia forward in the ACC Tournament, it also effectively locked up a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
It was a huge result in a game that always represented a tough challenge. This NC State soccer program is a reborn beast. It has a new coach and a haul of new players. Wednesday night’s showdown marked the first meeting between the programs since that upheaval.
“They basically changed their whole team,” Wiese said Tuesday.
That rebuilt program entered ranked No. 21 in the polls, meaning it came in as a slight but definite favorite, especially with home-field advantage. That hardly bothered Virginia.
“I feel like an underdog role fits us well,” Wiese said.
It certainly seemed to. The Cavaliers will assume the same role again in the quarterfinals. Lurking there Sunday at 8 p.m., waiting after a first-round bye, is No. 1 seed Pittsburgh. The teams clashed less than two weeks ago, the Panthers scoring three times in three minutes in a 4-1 drubbing.
Gelnovatch hesitated Tuesday to call that result a wake-up call. But he did label it “a punch in the mouth” that generated some useful introspection.
“We had a good discussion about team performance, individual performance,” Gelnovatch said. “But even some of the tactics that we rolled out, we all took responsibility for how that thing unfolded, a little bit.”
The prospect of a rematch, when the bracket came out, genuinely excited the team.
“What a great opportunity,” Wiese said.
That response carries no hint of fear. Only the determination Gelnovatch mentioned. His own response about the Pitt game carried more than determination. It carried a pledge.
“I promise you,” Gelnovatch said. “It’ll look a lot different.”
Wiese, at that media availability, made his own reverberating comment. It seemed innocuous, coming as it did in the captain’s familiar upbeat tone. But it transmitted something deeper.
“We have something to prove,” he said. “And we would have nothing to lose, going to Pitt.”
Something to prove and nothing to lose. That is the hallmark of a dangerous team.
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