Virginia Lacrosse Ranked No. 5 in USA Lacrosse Magazine Way Early Top 25

Matt Newton | Aug 17, 2024

Virginia is ranked No. 5 in the USA Lacrosse Magazine Way Early Top 25 Rankings for the 2025 men's lacrosse season. / Virginia Athletics

USA Lacrosse Magazine unveiled its Way Early Top 25 rankings for the 2025 men's lacrosse season this week and Virginia came in at No. 5 coming off of a second-straight trip to Championship Weekend. Ahead of the Cavaliers in the rankings are Ivy League contenders No. 4 Princeton and No. 3 Cornell and then a pair of ACC rivals in No. 2 Syracuse and No. 1-ranked and defending champions Notre Dame.

USA Lacrosse Magazine writer Patrick Stevens wrote the following analysis of Virginia for the 2025 season, projecting how much UVA lost in terms of starters and scoring and providing an "initial forecast" for what the Cavaliers might look like next spring:

"Last seen: Left thoroughly out of sorts in a 12-6 loss to Maryland in the program’s second consecutive NCAA semifinal ouster. It was also the Cavaliers’ lowest offensive output in coach Lars Tiffany’s eight seasons in Charlottesville.

Projected starts lost: 80 of 180 (44.4 percent)

Projected scoring departing: 218 of 403 points (54.1 percent)

Initial forecast: It’s going to be different. Program legend Connor Shellenberger exits the college scene after earning NCAA tournament most outstanding player honors in 2021 and a nod as a Tewaaraton finalist the next three years. Payton Cormier, the NCAA’s career goals leader who found the net a school-record 65 times in 2024, also departs. And Virginia will need a new defensive anchor with Cole Kastner out of lacrosse eligibility (though he’ll pursue a season of basketball at Stanford).

The next big Cavaliers star is probably McCabe Millon, who had 41 goals and 25 assists as a freshman but will find himself atop scouting reports next spring. Plenty of useful pieces remain in place, including midfielder Griffin Schutz (23 G, 12 A), long pole Ben Wayer (98 GBs, 26 CTs) and short stick Noah Chizmar.

But two things are abundantly clear: Virginia needs to improve a defense that struggled against the elite offenses on its schedule, and it has a goalie competition to sort out after Kyle Morris got the nod in the final four over the benched Matthew Nunes.

Bryant’s Johnny Hackett (23 G, 24 A) transfers in. So does revival-via-change-of-scenery candidate Charles Balsamo, who had 20 goals and 11 assists as a freshman at Duke but slipped to seven goals and nine assists last spring.

Tiffany offered a matter-of-fact assessment of his program’s standards after the loss to Maryland — “We don't measure ourselves by hanging final four banners, we measure ourselves with titles” — but given some of the top-end roster transition, reaching the final weekend might qualify as a more satisfying accomplishment than usual for the Cavaliers in 2025."

See the full Way Early USA Lacrosse Magazine top 25 rankings below and click here to see what Stevens wrote about the rest of the teams in his Way Early Top 25.

USA Lacrosse Magazine Way Early 2025 Men's Lacrosse Top 25

1. Notre Dame
2. Syracuse
3. Cornell
4. Princeton
5. Virginia
6. Maryland
7. Duke
8. Yale
9. Johns Hopkins
10. Denver
11. Penn State
12. Towson
13. Michigan
14. Georgetown
15. Army
16. Penn
17. North Carolina
18. Harvard
19. Lehigh
20. Ohio State
21. Albany
22. Villanova
23. Colgate
24. Richmond
25. Rutgers/Providence