Virginia Lacrosse Set for Rematch With No. 1 Maryland in NCAA Quarterfinals

This season, the NCAA Males’s Lacrosse Championship won’t happen on Memorial Day because it has for many years. As an alternative, the nationwide champion can be topped within the quarterfinals. On Sunday afternoon at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, No. 1 and undefeated Maryland, the overwhelming favourite to win the nationwide title, will meet the two-time defending nationwide champs Virginia, broadly thought-about to have the very best likelihood of any NCAA Event workforce of knocking the Terrapins off their path to the title. 

Whereas the nationwide championship won’t really be awarded to the winner of the quarterfinal recreation between Virginia and Maryland, this matchup definitely has the texture of a showdown that needs to be happening on lacrosse’s greatest stage. When the NCAA choice committee launched the bracket for the boys’s lacrosse match on Choice Sunday, they obtained some justified criticism from the lacrosse group for a collection of questionable selections concerning the sector’s seeding and matchups, particularly the inclusion of six out of a doable seven Ivy League groups within the match, together with the spurning of Notre Dame in favor of Harvard, in addition to the choice to present 5 of these Ivy League groups a top-eight seed and the possibility to host a primary spherical recreation. 

One of many ripple results of that call is that Virginia, an 11-3 workforce that received the ACC Championship and entered the match because the two-time defending nationwide champions, was in some way unseeded and given a highway recreation within the first spherical at No. 8 Brown. Maybe a very powerful consequence is that now that the Cavaliers have taken care of enterprise within the first spherical, as many anticipated they’d, the battle between Virginia and Maryland, which ought to have taken place no ahead of Championship Weekend (and actually needs to be occurring on Memorial Day), is now happening within the quarterfinals. 

The unseeded Cavaliers went as much as Windfall on Saturday evening and, utilizing an 8-0 second half run and incredible performances from Connor Shellenberger (eight factors) and Matthew Nunes (16 saves), routed the Brown Bears 17-10 on their house turf, giving Lars Tiffany a big win on the highway towards his alma mater and conserving Virginia’s bid for a three-peat alive and properly.

UVA has received every of the final two nationwide championships, however for this complete season, it has been Maryland vs. everyone. Many are already contemplating this Terrapins workforce to be some of the dominant lacrosse groups to ever take the sector. Nonetheless undefeated this season at 15-0, Maryland has received its video games by a mean margin of 9.3 targets per recreation. The Terrapins cruised to the Huge Ten Championship and have notched convincing wins towards Princeton, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Ohio State, and Virginia alongside the way in which. In reality, Maryland’s solely loss within the final two seasons got here within the 2021 nationwide title recreation towards Virginia by one aim. If the Terps seize the title and full the undefeated season, the 2022 Maryland males’s lacrosse workforce can be thought-about one of many best groups within the historical past of school lacrosse. 

Standing of their approach are the back-to-back defending champs, however this won’t be the primary time UVA and UMD have met this season. When the Wahoos and Terps met at Audi Subject in Washington D.C. again on March nineteenth, Maryland executed a superb recreation plan, but additionally got here into the sport with a lust for revenge after UVA ended Maryland’s excellent season within the nationwide championship in 2021. The Terrapins crushed the Cavaliers 23-12 in what needed to be a particularly satisfying victory. 

Even regardless of that lopsided consequence from two months in the past, Virginia is taken into account the one workforce most able to spoiling Maryland’s wonderful season as soon as once more. That’s much more true after No. 2 seed Georgetown, who entered the match 15-1 on the season, was upset within the first spherical by Delaware on Sunday evening. 

Maryland will definitely be favored to beat UVA once more when the groups meet on Sunday at 2:30pm at Ohio Stadium. Nonetheless, given Virginia’s observe file within the month of Could within the Lars Tiffany period (nine-consecutive NCAA Event wins), it might not be shocking to see the Cavaliers give the Terrapins a significantly better combat this time round. Be prepared for an additional prompt basic between Virginia and Maryland. 

See extra Virginia males’s lacrosse information and content material: Virginia Males’s Lacrosse on Sports activities Illustrated

See extra Virginia sports activities information and content material: Virginia Cavaliers on Sports activities Illustrated

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