Virginia Rebounds From Duke Loss With Comfortable 21-9 Victory Over Quinnipiac

The Cavaliers scored 15 goals in the first half and cruised to a 12-goal win on Saturday night at Klockner

Matt Newton | Apr 17, 2022

Less than 48 hours after the Cavaliers arrived home in Charlottesville from their 17-8 thrashing at the hands of the Duke Blue Devils in Durham on Thursday, No. 6 Virginia men's lacrosse took the field again, looking to put the disappointing performance at Duke in the rear view mirror. The Cavaliers did exactly what they needed to do, tallying 15 goals in the first half and cruising to a comfortable 21-9 victory over Quinnipiac on Saturday night at Klockner Stadium.

The Bobcats scored the game's first goal, but Virginia quelled their upset hopes quickly after that with six straight goals in response. The first three goals in that streak came from Connor Shellenberger, who snapped out of a shooting slump in which he scored just two goals on 23 shots over the last three games. Shellenberger tallied a hat trick within the first six minutes of the game.

Better yet, Shellenberger, who has been dealing with a shoulder injury over the last few games that certainly played a factor in his shooting drop-off, played less than a half of lacrosse on Saturday night, as Lars Tiffany was able to pull his star attackman from the game with the Cavaliers already holding a comfortable lead.

Virginia was also without the services of fifth-year attackman Matt Moore, who suffered a lower-body injury in the first half of UVA's loss at Richmond two weeks ago and missed the win against UNC last week. Moore started the game at Duke, but it was very clear that he was nowhere near 100%. He still managed to score two goals, but was pulled from the game early in the second half.

Even without Moore, the Virginia offense was firing on all cylinders. Quinnipiac scored the first goal of the second quarter to make it 6-2, but UVA then put together another scoring run, tallying the next eight goals and taking a 15-3 halftime lead.

Ten different Cavaliers registered a goal in the game, led by Xander Dickson, who started the game at attack and scored a season-high five goals. Shellenberger recorded three goals and five UVA players had two goals: Payton Cormier, Griffin Schutz, Jack Simmons, Patrick McIntosh, and Paul Rodriguez.

Lars Tiffany was able to go into his bench reserves early and often and many of Virginia's starters did not play very much in the second half.

That did not apply to Petey LaSalla, who was UVA's only available faceoff specialist in the game, as backup Gable Braun was out with an illness. LaSalla, who became Virginia's all-time leader in career ground balls on Thursday, was fantastic against Quinnipiac, winning 23 of his 28 draws and picking up 10 ground balls. Long-stick defensive midfielder Mitchell Whalen took six faceoffs for Virginia, winning three of them.

Despite watching his team score 21 goals, matching UVA's season-high scoring output, Lars Tiffany said after the game that he was still dissatisfied with his team's shooting performance and pointed out that it took the Cavaliers 57 shots to score the 21 goals. Thanks to LaSalla's dominance at the faceoff x and 19 Quinnipiac turnovers (including eight failed clears), Virginia enjoyed a hefty advantage in time of possession and had more shots on goal (37) than the Bobcats had shots (27). Against tougher defenses and without such a hefty possession advantage, that level of shooting percentage will not get the job done for Virginia down the stretch.

With two games left in the regular season and just a few weeks remaining until the NCAA Tournament, the Cavaliers are still hoping to build towards playing their best lacrosse in May and getting all of their starters completely healthy will certainly be a key step in that process. Even with the recent stumbles against Richmond and Duke, Virginia has managed to play well enough overall this season to go 9-3 and 4-1 in ACC play, giving UVA an opportunity to clinch at least a share of the ACC Championship next Saturday at Syracuse.

See more Virginia men's lacrosse news and content: Virginia Men's Lacrosse on Sports Illustrated

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Virginia Rebounds From Duke Loss With Comfortable 21-9 Victory Over Quinnipiac

Matt Newton | Apr 17, 2022

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