![<p>John Schroter stifled Joey Spallina in a "King Kong [against] Godzilla" slugfest.</p>](https://snworksceo.imgix.net/cav/bd31cee9-5712-408e-a6f4-61ad5a2ad58d.sized-1000x1000.png?w=1000)
Coach Lars Tiffany gazed at the scoreboard, hands on hips. He stared it down for a long second. Then he turned and waded into the center of a downbeat huddle.
Not long before, he had prowled the sideline, shouting instructions as a tie game rocketed into its final five minutes, the stands rattling behind him. Virginia, tied with No. 8 Syracuse, needed to score. It needed to seize this chance for a mammoth win.
But the Cavaliers (5-5, 0-1 ACC) missed that opportunity in a 12-10 loss Saturday at Klöckner Stadium to the Orange (8-2, 1-0 ACC), in front of 3,504 people, in the latest edition of a series that entered the day tied all-time. They lost despite going 16-25 on faceoffs and 20-21 on clears and winning the ground ball battle 37-31.
Syracuse senior attackman Owen Hiltz, whose three goals led the Orange in scoring along with junior midfielder Michael Leo, scored with 2:10 left to put the Orange ahead for good.
Virginia scrambled for another chance but never found it, depositing Tiffany on the sideline, conferring with his assistants, then gazing into the distance at the final score.
“We’re all sad,” Tiffany said. “We’re all mad. But man, I’m just grateful. We talk about the improvement that needs to be happening, and you saw a lot of that today.”
The Cavaliers had steered into the last 10 minutes clutching a one-goal lead. But they never scored again and meanwhile surrendered the game’s final three goals. In a game stuffed with 95 shots, Virginia hurled just five in the fourth quarter. It committed four turnovers and caused none in that final quarter.
But it did just about everything else right, starting from the beginning. It had planned, Tiffany said, to play more patiently than its usual breakneck style. Not exactly to slow it down. Just to not force every opportunity in sight.
That, at least, was the idea. Then the shots started flying, one and then two and then more. Tiffany looked at offensive coordinator Kevin Cassese.
“I actually turned to Kevin at one point, like, ‘I thought we were gonna try to possess a little bit more, not take shots every 12 seconds,’” Tiffany said.
But they were good shots. They pushed Virginia out to a 5-1 lead that became a 6-4 lead at halftime. And then Syracuse hijacked the momentum, scoring four straight goals, a run halted by two goals from sophomore attackman McCabe Millon, who mustered his fattest stat line of the season with three goals and three assists.
Millon’s goals knotted things, and then it was back and forth until the end, when Virginia went scoreless for the final 11:38. Syracuse junior goalie Jimmy McCool certainly did not make it easier for the Cavaliers, making 17 saves.
It was, in fact, a goalie showcase. Senior Matthew Nunes made 16 saves of his own, solid on tight angles and expansive in the clear.
“He played a great game today,” sophomore faceoff man Andrew Greenspan said. “Super lucky to have him back there. He’s a really calming presence.”
Greenspan had a day of his own, winning 13 of 18 faceoffs. He did it against Syracuse sophomore John Mullen, the fourth-best faceoff man in the country.
“He has really fast hands,” Greenspan said. “He likes to get in and out really fast. He wins it at a really high level, so we tried to muck it up in that sense as much as we can.”
Greenspan’s performance, along with Nunes’s and Millons’s, numbered among a cadre of dominant individual performances. One of those belonged to junior defenseman John Schroter, who, for the second year in a row, shut down Syracuse junior attackman Joey Spallina.
In this matchup last year, for the first time in his career, Spallina tallied not a single goal or assist. He managed only one assist this year, stymied again and again by the hulking wall of Schroter.
“He's one of the best cover guys in the country,” Virginia senior midfielder Noah Chizmar said. “We were confident with that matchup going into it.”
Tiffany put it another way.
“That is King Kong [against] Godzilla contact on the corner right there,” he said.
One of the beasts won in decisive fashion, though. Virginia may have hoped this game would turn into something like a movie, a sequel to its start to the season. Or into something like the second act of a play.
It looked like it might, for a while.
“We stepped up on defense,” Tiffany said. “We stepped up in the goal. We stepped up with ground balls. Our offense played with a lot more confidence. So I like where we're going.”
But there he was, staring at that scoreboard, with its empty clock and the final score.
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