Virginia Men's Lacrosse: 2024 Season in Review and Outlook for Next Year

Matt Newton | Jun 10, 2024

Connor Shellenberger dodges during the Virginia men's lacrosse game against Maryland in the NCAA semifinals at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. / Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

It's been a little over two weeks since the 2024 Virginia men's lacrosse season came to its bitter and disappointing end. The Cavaliers advanced to their 26th Final Four and played on Championship Weekend for the fourth time in the last five NCAA Tournaments, but as Lars Tiffany and his players often say, UVA only hangs banners for championships, and the Hoos came up short in a frustrating 12-6 loss to Maryland in the semifinals.

The 2024 iteration of Virginia men's lacrosse was a flawed and imperfect team, with many issues that flared at various points in the season. But since the Cavaliers were able to overcome those problems and reach the final weekend of the year, let's organize our season in review in terms of breaking down what went wrong against Maryland, a team they defeated by four on the road back in March.

The biggest issue was simply that Virginia never had the ball. Anthony Ghobriel and the UVA faceoff unit were pretty good this year when they were healthy, but that didn't seem to be the case against Maryland. In the first meeting with the Terps back on March 16th, Luke Wierman won the faceoff battle 16-12 and won six the of seven fourth-quarter draws, perhaps indicating that he had "solved" Ghobriel and Thomas Colucci. Whether that was the case or if injuries came into play, Wierman had himself a day in the rematch, winning 15 of the 22 faceoffs, while Colucci went 7/15 and Ghobriel went 0/6 and took only two draws after the first quarter.

Exacerbating the possession disadvantage, Maryland also won the ground ball battle 38-29 over a Virginia team that once again ranked No. 1 in the country in ground balls. Sometimes the Cavaliers had games in which it seemed they were allergic to the 50-50 balls, like when they went a combined -30 in the ground ball category in two games against Notre Dame.

Virginia had some all-time offensive talent on its roster, with Connor Shellenberger setting the ACC record for career assists, Payton Cormier breaking the NCAA's all-time goals record, and McCabe Millon tallying 66 points in the first season of what should be a great career. But the Cavaliers were top-heavy, with those three players accounting for 228 of the team's 403 total points last season. It was clear all year long that UVA didn't have the same overall level of offensive production from the prior season, in particular at midfield, so operating at such a distinct possession disadvantage against a Maryland defense with excellent individual defenders like Ajax Zappitello was a disastrous combination.

The loss of offensive mastermind Sean Kirwan, who left after the 2023 season to become the head coach at Dartmouth, was not talked about very much, but was extremely costly. His replacement, former Lehigh head coach Kevin Cassese, did an admirable job with the UVA offense, but struggled to find ways to effectively utilize the Cavalier midfield. In 2023, Virginia's midfield included proven scorers and veterans like Thomas McConvey, Jeff Conner, Peter Garno, Evan Zinn, and Ricky Miezan. All of those players departed and left Virginia with significant questions at midfield that were never quite answered.

Tufts transfer Jack Boyden tallied 37 points on 20 goals and 17 assists and Griffin Schutz provided 23 goals and 12 assists, but the Cavaliers never got consistent goal scoring beyond that. Players like Ryan Colsey (23 points) and Joey Terenzi (13 points) had their moments and showed that they could be impact contributors later on in their careers, but not yet. No other offensive midfielder reached double-digit points for the entire season.

Thus, when Maryland's stout defense held Shellenberger, Cormier, and Millon to a combined four goals, the Cavaliers couldn't rely on their midfield to come through. Boyden, Schutz, and Colsey had zero points and UVA's only other goals came from Terenzi and short-stick defensive midfielder Noah Chizmar.

Whether it was a lack of individual players winning their one-on-one matchups or a poorly designed team offense, when combined with the severe possession disparity, the outcome was Virginia's fewest goals scored in a game since February of 2016.

Looking forward, the reins of Virginia's offense will clearly be put in the hands of McCabe Millon coming off of a 66-point freshman campaign, but the Cavaliers will need a boost on offense as they turn the page from the lethal Shellenberger/Cormier duo. A few things will have to happen in order for UVA to not see a massive drop-off on the offensive end next season:
- reinvent the offense to better suit the personnel and boost midfield scoring
- prioritize development from the returners
- get at least one or two immediate game-changing newcomers from the incoming freshmen class or the transfer portal

Fortunately for the Cavaliers on that last point, help is on the way. Lars Tiffany has already gone to work in the transfer portal, snagging commitments from two of the top available offensive players in the portal in Bryant's Johnny Hackett and Duke's Charles Balsamo (click on their names to read more about them). Hackett and Balsamo both have two years of eligibility remaining and are experienced to the point that they can provide an immediate boost to UVA's midfield or even the attack line, as Hackett played one season on attack and Balsamo could fit at attack as a lefty.

Virginia is also bringing in the nation's No. 1-ranked recruiting class (per Inside Lacrosse). UVA's 2024 class includes five players ranked in the top 25, four of whom are attackmen or midfielders. The group is headlined by Ryan Duenkel (attackman, No. 3 overall), Ryan Colsey's younger brother Kyle Colsey (attackman, No. 9 overall), and Hudson Hausmann (midfielder, No. 12 overall).

In addition to McCabe Millon, Virginia returns Griffin Schutz, Ryan Colsey, Joey Terenzi, Truitt Sunderland, Thomas Mencke, and Will Inderlied. There's also the question of Jack Boyden, who has played five seasons of lacrosse (four at DIII Tufts), but there is a precedent for players appealing for an additional year of eligibility after making a transition between Divisions.

Though it will be dependent on how much the returners can improve and how much of an immediate impact will be made by UVA's incoming freshmen class and transfers, the pieces are certainly there for Lars Tiffany and Kevin Cassese to put together an effective offensive unit.

Moving over to the defense, Virginia's defensive unit got a bad rap in the second half of the season and with good reason. Pretty much anytime the Cavaliers played a good team down the stretch of the regular season, their defense was decimated. UVA gave up 16 goals to Johns Hopkins, 18 to Duke, and 18 to Syracuse. Decent showings against Notre Dame (11 goals allowed) and Maryland (10 goals allowed) showed what the Hoos were capable on that end, but then they also gave up 18 to Notre Dame in the ACC Tournament and then did not play well in the rematch against Maryland when it mattered most. The Terps only scored 12, but could've scored plenty more had John Tillman not put the brakes on in the fourth quarter in order to kill the clock.

So, what went wrong? Lars Tiffany admitted that he tinkered too much and made UVA's slide schemes too complicated for what was a young and inexperienced defense that lost Cade Saustad, Quentin Matsui, Scott Bower, and Grayson Sallade from the previous season. Simplifying things at the start of postseason play worked beautifully, as UVA smothered a quality St. Joe's offense in round No. 1 and then kept the high-powered Johns Hopkins offense in check in the quarterfinals after a slow start. Virginia's defense grew a great deal as the season went on, especially as players like Ben Wayer and John Schroter emerged.

The way UVA's defense played in the semifinal against Maryland was more an issue of the defense being on the field too much due to the possession disadvantage than a result of poor performance. The Cavaliers needed to win more faceoffs and get more from their offense than they did and the 12-6 loss was not primarily the fault of their defense.

At the end of the day, Virginia managed to make another Championship Weekend with this defense and lost in the same round as in 2023. Sure, the Cavaliers wanted to get that third shot at Notre Dame, but it's most likely the case that no one was stopping the Fighting Irish from going back-to-back.

Virginia's defense has some reason for optimism. Though the Cavaliers are losing key pieces like Cole Kastner, Mitchell Whalen, and Chase Yager, they are returning a solid group of experienced players like Ben Wayer, George Fulton, John Schroter, Griffin Kology, Tommy McNeal, and Noah Chizmar. Wayer in particular looks to be on a superstar trajectory following a season that saw him post 13 points, 98 ground balls, and 26 caused turnovers. If Wayer continues to grow as one of the nation's top LSMs and some of the other returners take a step forward, UVA's defense could actually be better in 2025.

Lastly, we must comment on what happened behind that defense and in between the pipes for the Cavaliers down the stretch. An argument can be made that Lars Tiffany created a "goalie problem" for his team when one didn't exist. On March 30th, Matthew Nunes had perhaps the single-best goalie performance of the season when he saved 16 shots versus 10 goals allowed and went coast-to-coast to score the game-winning goal to lead Virginia to a tough ranked win at Harvard, garnering virtually every national player of the week award in the sport in the following days. Nunes followed that up by posting a 68.8% save percentage in UVA's win over North Carolina to open ACC play.

But from that point forward, an unfortunate and somewhat blown out of proportion narrative began to develop and ultimately led to redshirt freshman Kyle Morris making his first-career college lacrosse start at goalie for Virginia in the Final Four against Maryland.

An untimely injury right before UVA's annual nightmare against Duke led to Nunes getting pulled after a first quarter in which he allowed seven goals and made zero saves. Morris came in and didn't do much better as the Cavaliers suffered their all-too-typical lopsided loss to the Blue Devils. Nunes then struggled early on again at Syracuse, allowing eight goals without making a save, but then bounced back and was a big reason Virginia nearly won that game, finishing with 15 saves, eight of which came in the third quarter. Of course, everyone's takeaway was that Nunes had a stretch of 15 goals allowed with no saves in consecutive games, rather than what happened for the rest of the Syracuse game. Nunes played well in the first meeting with Notre Dame, making 12 saves versus 11 goals allowed, then was blitzed by the Irish in the rematch when it seemed the entire UVA roster forgot to get off the bus in an ugly 18-9 loss.

In the NCAA Tournament, where Nunes has a proven track record of elevating his game, including a 17-save performance against Notre Dame in the 2023 semifinals, Nunes continued that trend by going a solid 50% in an easy victory over St. Joe's, improving Virginia's record to 10-1 when Nunes goes at least 50%.

Lars Tiffany then put a very short leash on Nunes heading into the quarterfinals vs. Hopkins, pulling him six minutes into the game after he had given up four goals and made one save, with at least two of those four goals coming on shots he had no chance of stopping. Tiffany then decided to "go with the hot hand" and gave Kyle Morris his first-career start on Championship Weekend. Morris played well enough, making a couple of nice early saves, but perhaps as evidence that the performance of the goalie was never one of Virginia's main issues, the Cavaliers were still dominated by the Terrapins to end their season.

In summary, among Virginia's most concerning problems - frequent miscommunication by a young defense, a talented, but one-dimensional and predictable offense, ineffectiveness in transition offense and defense, and vulnerability at faceoff - I'd argue that goalkeeping was not one of them, but the discussion surrounding UVA so often devolved into a goalie debate. I'd argue that Tiffany and the Cavaliers unnecessarily made it that way by treating a symptom of the team's problems as if it were the root cause.

At any rate, Virginia goes into next season with both Matthew Nunes and Kyle Morris still on the roster, now each with some tape of having been quality netminders. Tiffany said previously that the plan was to have Nunes start all four of his seasons at UVA and then, thanks to Morris redshirting in 2023, Morris would still have two years of eligibility when he became the full-time starter in 2026. That plan can still be executed, but there is now a chance that the crease will turn into something of a carousel for the Cavaliers in 2025.

To conclude our review of the 2024 Virginia men's lacrosse season and outlook for the Cavaliers in 2025, here's a rough outline of what Virginia is expected to lose, retain, and gain this offseason:

Departures
Offense: Connor Shellenberger, Payton Cormier, Patrick McIntosh, Will Cory, Jack Boyden?
Defense: Cole Kastner, Chase Yager, Mitchell Whalen, Mike Prestipino
FOGO: Thomas Colucci, Matthew DeSouza

Returners
Offense: McCabe Millon, Griffin Schutz, Ryan Colsey, Thomas Mencke, Joey Terenzi, Truitt Sunderland, Will Inderlied
Defense: Ben Wayer, George Fulton, Tommy McNeal, John Schroter, Griffin Kology, Noah Chizmar, Will Erdmann, Wills Burt
FOGO: Anthony Ghobriel, Gable Braun
Goalie: Matthew Nunes, Kyle Morris

Additions:
Recruiting class (IL ranking): A Ryan Duenkel (No. 3 overall), A Kyle Colsey (No. 9 overall), M Hudson Hausmann (No. 12 overall), D Luke Hublitz (No. 15 overall), A Sean Browne (No. 24 overall), M JP Lagunowich (No. 39 overall), D Luke Jamin (four-star), G Troy Capstraw (four-star), FOGO Christian Grosso (three-star)
Transfers: Bryant midfielder Johnny Hackett, Duke midfielder Charles Balsamo