The No. 8 seed Virginia Cavaliers (10-6) were unable to overcome an early eight-goal deficit and the johns hopkins Blue Jays (11-4) left Klöckner Stadium on Sunday afternoon with a 14-8 win. It marks only the second NCAA Tournament loss at Klöckner Stadium for the Cavaliers. The only other setback came in UVa’s last NCAA First Round loss in 2007, a 14-8 undoing to Delaware.
“This is a tough moment in the season,” said Virginia men’s lacrosse head coach dom starsia. “I don’t really know what to say. I’m proud of my team. Hopkins outplayed us today. It felt like we couldn’t make a shot when we needed it or make a stop when we had to. It wasn’t for lack of effort. We had two good spurts, at the beginning of the game and in the third quarter, but they had an important face-off goal that switched the momentum in the third quarter and got them going again.”
UVa jumped out to an early 2-0 lead on back-to-back goals by Mark Cockerton. johns hopkins quickly called a timeout following Cockerton’s second goal on an Owen Van Arsdale helper at 10:16. The break boded well for the Blue Jays as they went on an 8-0 run that spelled the difference in the game.
Brandon Benn scored the first goal of the run for johns hopkins. He intercepted an errant Matt Barrett pass on a failed UVa clear and found the empty net at 9:38 in the first quarter. Benn scored two more times during the Hopkins spurt. Wells Stanwick capped the run at 8:24 on his second goal of the streak.
Ryan Tucker put UVa back on the board with a laser at 6:59 in the second quarter. After UVa won the ensuing faceoff, Joseph Lisicky picked up the ground ball and streaked down the field and scored unassisted at 6:46, cutting UVa’s deficit to four goals, 8-4.
Connor Reed found the back of the goal at 4:28 in the second quarter for Johns Hopkins, extending its lead to five goals. Van Arsdale found Pat Harbeson at 3:20 to send UVa into the intermission trailing four goals, 9-5.
Harbeson’s goal started a 4-0 run for the Cavaliers. Van Arsdale, followed by Zed Williams and Tyler German scored markers to bring UVa within a goal, 9-8, with 5:29 left in the third frame. UVa didn’t score again.
Stanwick quickly found nylon at 5:18 to give johns hopkins some cushion at 10-8. Stanwick’s goal helped the Blue Jays finish the game on a 5-0 run as the Cavaliers were shutout in the fourth quarter.
UVa won the battles of shots (49-40) and ground balls (40-34). johns hopkins had more faceoff wins (14-12), saves (12-10) and had more turnovers (15-8).
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Chris Graham
