Virginia lacrosse coach Dom Starsia isn’t eager for comparisons.
Two, however, are obvious for his top-ranked Cavaliers (10-0), who host No. 9 Maryland (6-2) on Saturday afternoon.
It’s a nearly identical situation to a year ago, when unbeaten Virginia was coming off a defeat of Johns Hopkins. Maryland throttled the Cavaliers 13-7, resulting in a goalie change for Virginia the next week.
This time, though, Starsia believes a steadier group will prevent such a humbling.
“Last year’s team was a little more immature,” he said. “We got spanked up there. I don’t think there’s any excuse for that to happen, and I’d be disappointed if it did. Maryland may be good enough to beat us. I think we fully understand it will take a terrific effort on our part, and I think we’re prepared to do that.”
That leads to a different comparison - to the unbeaten national champions of 2006. Virginia has scored at least 10 goals in every game, something even that ’06 powerhouse couldn’t accomplish. Still, it was an offensive juggernaut, and a Virginia team coming off a 16-15 shootout at Hopkins last week might have some of the same characteristics.
“For all the goals, I don’t think we took 10 bad shots the whole season,” Starsia said. “I wouldn’t say that about us now. … But we’ve been able to establish some balance, which is making us very dangerous.”
Mids on the edge
There’s two ways to view No. 16 Navy’s season as the Midshipmen (6-3) prepare to face Georgetown (3-4) on Saturday afternoon.
One is that the Midshipmen are six well-timed plays away from entering the final weekend of March undefeated. The other is that their lapses have cost them a serious chance to host next month’s Patriot League tournament.
One-goal losses to Bucknell and Colgate - and North Carolina before that - make it difficult to assess Navy. Coach Richie Meade has gone from expressing frustration after games to offering a different evaluation a few days later.
“I think I’ve been too critical of the way we played defense,” he said. “We’ve made some mistakes that cost us very dearly. Usually you lose by a goal, and everybody has to look at themselves and ask, ’What one thing could I have done better, that little extra thing?’ It’s usually not one thing. It’s usually a lot of little things.”
There were more than a few things in last week’s loss to Colgate. Navy wasn’t particularly sharp in unsettled situations - a particularly dangerous facet of the game to struggle with on any day.
But even with those miscues, Meade said he believes the Mids still had a chance to win.
“I’m going to sound like a psychologist, but you can lose sight of the good things you’re doing because you’re not having the success you want,” Meade said.
Crimson rising
John Tillman knows the label that followed Harvard lacrosse for decades: lost cause.
Maybe not for much longer. The longtime Navy assistant has the No. 13 Crimson (4-2) poised to make an NCAA tournament push in his second season, even after Wednesday’s 9-8 overtime loss at Georgetown.
Harvard even looked the part of Tillman’s old Navy teams, grinding out goals in atypical fashion. They aren’t national title contenders yet, but it’s also clear the Crimson’s time as a perpetual also-ran could be done.
“We’re trying to change our identity,” Tillman said. “We’re trying to be a really scrappy, tough team. You would never say that about Harvard. That’s never been our identity. To try to do that in 16 months has been a challenge, but it’s not bad. We’re making progress.”
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