He kept kneeling at the center of the field, and tensing, and then, when the whistle blasted, reacting. Sophomore Andrew Greenspan. Just farming faceoff wins.
He racked up 13 in all on 18 tries Saturday against Syracuse. Almost all of them against sophomore John Mullen, the fourth-best faceoff man in the nation.
Four days before, Coach Lars Tiffany, talking about faceoffs at his weekly media availability, grimaced and tilted his head slightly. Virginia, in its previous four games, had gone 38-93 at the dot. It was getting bullied.
“We’ve gotta be better at the faceoff X,” Tiffany said. “It has not gone well the last couple games. And that’s gonna be huge [against Syracuse].”
It was. The Cavaliers went 16-25 in total in the 12-10 loss to the No. 8 Orange, their first time in six games winning the faceoff battle. Improvement? You could see it, at the dot and elsewhere.
Virginia is still lumbering through its worst season in eight years, languishing at 5-5 and 0-1 in the ACC. But in an eminently winnable game — one in which it led 6-4 at halftime, one that stood tied at 10-10 with three minutes left — it demonstrated massive strides.
Little of it came as a surprise.
Virginia’s clearing game, for example, has trended better for weeks because of a simple coaching decision. Entering the year, Tiffany said the coaching staff drafted an entirely new clearing scheme, modeled off a common college approach. But it yielded stinkers like marks of 24-32 against Colgate and 18-25 against Richmond, placing it No. 64 in the country in clearing percentage.
Virginia abandoned that experiment, returning to its old clear, and it has cleared far more efficiently since. It went 20-21 against Syracuse.
Even senior goalie Matthew Nunes, with more than just his passing, got in on the act. He ventured across midfield a couple times throughout the game.
That is another thing Virginia, in recent weeks, has solidified — its goalie play. Nunes and junior goalie Kyle Morris, after all the drama of their battle last postseason, split time for the first five games of this season. Morris started and often played well into the second half before Nunes entered.
Virginia’s weekly depth chart, Tiffany said early in the season, pointed to Morris. His save percentage slightly eclipsed Nunes’s, and he passed better, capable of “throwing a 70-yard ball with a tight spiral.”
But Virginia, struggling, needed Nunes’s veteran leadership. So in the last five games, he has played all but three minutes. He made 16 saves against Syracuse.
“He played outstanding,” senior midfielder Noah Chizmar said. “We tried to get him as many shots that he wanted to see, and he was dealing with them well and getting the ball up and out.”
Nunes rebuffed a fusillade of low shots, especially, dropping down to snare ones at his feet. At halftime, that forced an adjustment out of Syracuse’s shooters. They did not need to talk about it, Syracuse graduate midfielder Sam English said. They all knew something needed to change.
Syracuse boasts the country’s sixth-best scoring offense, averaging 15 goals per game. But it scored only 10 Saturday. The entire defense, led by junior John Schroter, submitted one of its best performances of the season.
Schroter matched up against Syracuse’s Joey Spallina, who entered the game averaging the third-most points per game in the country.
“He’s so elusive with his dodging,” Tiffany said earlier in the week. “He’s got a good first step. He’s strong, he’s powerful. He can take a check, he can initiate contact.”
But Schroter was always up to the task.
“We’re just fortunate that we’ve got a guy who can bench press 350 pounds and moves really well laterally and is 6-foot-5,” Tiffany said.
Spallina often started from behind the goal, Schroter stalking him from the other side. Spallina would explode, swerving around the crease, and Schroter would follow. Then they would smash into each other — like “King Kong [against] Godzilla,” in Tiffany’s words. Spallina would jettison the ball elsewhere.
He managed a single assist and no goals. His previous lowest-point game of the season was three points.
At the other end, Virginia’s star played his best game of the season. Sophomore attackman McCabe Millon’s three goals and three assists made for his most points of the year, a long-awaited detonation as he attempts to fill the quarterback role vacated by Connor Shellenberger.
“You’re seeing McCabe Millon, throughout the season, get better and better at that quarterback role,” Tiffany said. “And I thought we saw a lot of that today.”
Virginia, with Millon and the improved clearing game and that faceoff dominance — and a 37-31 ground ball advantage — hung around. The progress Tiffany had hoped for earlier in the week was certainly visible.
“We’re nine games in,” Tiffany said before the Syracuse game, “and we’re still figuring things out. It’s a race to improve. And we better get better fast.”
Virginia did. But it ultimately lost.
The Cavaliers took just five shots in the fourth quarter against Syracuse’s 17. Their shooting accuracy withered a bit, at 10-43. And they surrendered possession with turnovers, avoidable ones, simple passes skittering away across the grass.
“We gotta stop throwing away five or six balls randomly during the game,” Tiffany said last week.
That is something Virginia will surely angle to improve when it travels Saturday to face new No. 8 North Carolina. The Cavaliers flumped just outside the USILA top 20 this week, the first team receiving votes. They are No. 19 in the RPI. If a late-season push for the NCAA Tournament is possible, it has to start soon.
“Every week we’re getting better and better,” Chizmar said, on the field after the Syracuse game. “It’d be stupid to fall apart now.”
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