The Virginia field hockey team advanced to the NCAA Tournament semifinals with a 4-0 win over #4 seed Maryland on Sunday in College Park.
The win sends UVA (14-6) to a Final Four matchup with top seed North Carolina (16-3), which advanced to its second straight Final Four with a 4-2 win over Harvard.
UVA and UNC split their matches in the 2023 season, with Virginia winning the lone regular-season matchup between the two teams, 3-2, back on Oct. 20, then losing 3-2 to the Tar Heels in the ACC Tournament semifinals on Nov. 1.
Virginia has been making a go of it without long-time head coach Michele Madison, who announced on Oct. 26 that she was having to take leave for the remainder of the season for an undisclosed reason.
Associate head coach Ole Keusgen has led the ‘Hoos to a 3-1 record since, including the dominating performance on Sunday in which Virginia held Maryland (17-4) to a single shot on goal.
“We found a way to minimize their touches and their possibilities and make the space around them small, and then sometimes a tackle outside is also very fortunate. We have been fortunate. We have been focused, but also very detail-oriented. That’s why it worked the way it worked,” Keusgen said afterward.
Maryland had the first scoring chances of the game, earning three straight penalty corners in the first 90 seconds. Junior midfielder Noa Boterman made a defensive save on one of the Maryland attempts, keeping the Terrapins off the board. Hope Rose took a shot at the goal five minutes into the game, her attempt going wide.
It was the last shot that Maryland would take until the fourth quarter.
“I think what is more important than our two goals is the very beginning of the game when, after 90 seconds, Maryland had a battery of corners. That, to me, was the most important thing, because they might just switch the entire game momentum, and it would be a very different game,” Keusgen said.
Virginia had its first opportunity midway through the first quarter, earning their own slate of three straight penalty corners. On the third attempt, a shot by sophomore midfielder Lauren Kenah was saved, but sophomore midfielder Daniela Mendez-Trendler picked up the rebound off the goalie’s pads and knocked it into the cage to give UVA a 1-0 lead with 5:47 remaining in the opening period.
Sophomore back Madison Orsi added a second goal off a corner in the second quarter, deflecting in a shot from Boterman with 7:31 remaining in the half.
Freshman Minnie Pollock added a third goal for the Cavaliers in the third quarter, firing off a shot from the top of the circle that smashed into the boards in the back of the cage.
Grad student Adele Iacobucci made it 4-0 3:03 into the final quarter. Iacobucci picked up a rebound off the pads after a hot shot from Pollock then dribbled around a defender to find opened space, and firing off an on-target shot.
Maryland had a pair of penalty corners with 10 minutes remaining in the game, but the shot was blocked. The Terrapins had another penalty corner a minute later with the same result. Virginia’s defense kept Maryland from taking a shot for the final 8:22 of the game.
“Holding strong at the beginning of the game and making sure that we have the right place, the discipline and also the sacrificial mindset to defend those corners, was absolutely crucial,” Keusgen said. “We spent a lot of time improving our corners. It’s absolutely crucial in field hockey that we can execute on corners, especially your first two or three corners, which we have done, and made our game today a lot easier.”
Support AFP
Share
Chris Graham
