Second-ranked Virginia lost Matt Moore and Petey LaSalla to injury, then lost, for the first time ever, to unranked Richmond, 17-13, at Robins Stadium Saturday afternoon.
Moore had two goals and an assist before leaving in the second. LaSalla, Virginia’s faceoff specialist, left after suffering an injury that resulted in a UR penalty.
LaSalla won the game’s first seven faceoffs as Virginia (7-2) raced out to a 7-3 lead in the first, but Richmond (6-3) closed out the second on a 5-0 run and held a 10-9 lead at the intermission.
The Spiders continued their scoring spree by netting the first two goals of the second half to eventually lead it 12-9. Payton Cormier’s third goal of the afternoon broke up the Spiders’ 7-0 run at the 9:58 mark in the third.
Richmond led by as many as four (16-12) midway through the fourth quarter. The Cavaliers tried to get something going on offense after Cormier notched his fifth goal of the day with 5:33 to play, but it was the Spiders who scored the game’s final goal on an empty net with 35 seconds left.
“We’ve seen teams come out and give us a really, really great effort and earn victories over us,” UVA coach Lars Tiffany said. “The key for us is learning from this. We’re going to dissect this tape and get deep down into it and see what did they exposed. You can’t just write it off as they were the better team today. They were the better team, but there’s things in there and were going to find those out, and we’re going to get better.”
Entering Saturday’s game, UVA held a win streak of 73 games over Commonwealth of Virginia opponents. Its last loss was to Washington & Lee on April 23, 1977, when the Generals were an NCAA Division-I institution in men’s lacrosse.
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Chris Graham
