Michael Sowers was in the nightmares of the Virginia defense on Saturday night. Well, maybe not literally. But Princeton’s Senior attackman did enough that it wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise if Alex Rode or any member of Virginia’s defense did see him in their nightmares.
Sowers led the Tigers as they took down the second-ranked (now #6) Hoos by a score of 16-12 in Charlottesville. The Hoos trailed 8-7 at halftime, and it was all Princeton from there on out. While the margin might be a bit worrisome, this is a young team that’s still getting it’s feet underneath it.
Defense is still shaping up
The mostly young and inexperienced Wahoo defense had no answer for Sowers, as he recorded 4 goals and 4 assists on Princeton’s path to victory.
Lars Tiffany started two Freshmen on defense, Quentin Matsui and Scott Bower. A third Freshman, Payton Cormier, started in the midfield. In total, that’s three freshman out of the six defensive players. It’s no shock that Sowers was able to rip apart a defense with some players that had never seen a player remotely approaching his caliber.
Despite their age, Virginia’s freshman are talented. After all, they held #11 Loyola and unranked Towson to 9 and 8 goals, respectively. And the defense is anchored by a few veterans that know their way around a college lacrosse field.
Junior Kyle Kology, Senior Dox Aitken, and Sophomore Jeff Conner are the remaining three starters at defense and midfield. All three are fantastic players, and all three played massive roles in Virginia’s national championship run last year. And let’s not forget about Alex Rode.
The Junior goalie was named Championship Weekend’s most outstanding player last year, and looked like it in his first couple of games. He ended up with 14 saves and 16 goals against (although the final, garbage-time goal can hardly be blamed on him). Rode, like the others, was left at the mercies of Michael Sowers at times.
He was left out to dry by his defenders on more than one occasion. Again, it’s still early going and there’s still a lot of time for them to figure it out.
Virginia’s offense is right there
It may be the most infuriating thing about watching college lacrosse. Your team has all the pieces, they do everything right, and then one little thing takes it down like a house of cards. Virginia’s offense fits this bill perfectly. They have incredible talent, seem to be working well together, and then one wayward pass or decision and that little rubber ball is going back the other way.
They’ve scored 12 goals in all three games. Don’t get me wrong, that’s solid. But Virginia—without a doubt—can be much, much better than solid. Just look at the talent on the offensive end.
Ian Laviano, Michael Kraus, and Matt Moore are one of the best attacking trios in all of college lacrosse. Then comes Dox Aitken, possibly the best midfielder in all of college lacrosse. And Jeff Conner and Payton Cormier are no slouches themselves.
They were so close on so many opportunities, and fell just short. But credit the Princeton defense for making it difficult. Goalie Erik Peters came up with 16 saves to quell the Virginia offense. The rest of the Princeton defense made it difficult for the Hoos, getting very physical at times and not giving away very many good looks at goal.
Despite that, Michael Kraus and Matt Moore still came up with 2 goals and 2 assists, including this ridiculous finish from Kraus.
Ian Laviano also added three goals and an assist. While the Hoos had a host of amazing goals, they also had a number of missed opportunities. Lars Tiffany will look to clean that up as Virginia prepares for High Point on Tuesday.
How good is High Point?
Speaking of Virginia’s next foe, let’s check out how they’ve done thus far. The answer is, uh, not good. Not good at all. Four games in, the Panthers have probably already blown their chances at an NCAA Tournament bid.
It appears that last year’s wonder season, which included wins over UVA and Duke, was just that: A wonderful season that’s not happening again for a long time.
It’s not so much the losses that’s worrying for HPU, it’s more how they’ve lost. Nobody can blame them for losing games to Duke, Maryland, and Cornell, three teams with an average ranking of 10th. They can be blamed for losing those three games by a total of 30 goals.
Yes, you read that right.
They allowed 23 goals to Maryland in the season opener, 17 to Duke, and 21 to Cornell. In their sole win, against Drexel, they allowed 15.
As mentioned above, the Virginia offense hasn’t exactly been living up to their potential on the attacking side. This is a chance to break out against a very, very shaky High Point defense. In case you were wondering, the Panthers rank 73rd out of 75 teams in D1 in terms of scoring defense. Oof.
Expect Virginia to win big against High Point on Tuesday night. This should be a chance for all parts of this Virginia team to gain some confidence before entering the hardest section of the schedule in a couple of weeks.
High Point at Virginia starts at 5 PM ET on Tuesday night, and will be televised on ESPNU.