Men’s lacrosse edges Notre Dame

By JOHN GALINSKY
Daily Progress staff writer

When Virginia men’s lacrosse coach Dom Starsia woke up Tuesday morning and saw the cold, rainy conditions, he said, “You just knew it was going to be a tough day.”
As it turned out, he was right. The fourth-ranked Cavaliers struggled offensively most of the afternoon against No. 19 Notre Dame before scoring two late goals and escaping Klockner Stadium with a 7-5 victory.
It was the third straight game that UVa (3-1) played a 2001 Final Four participant in inclement weather at Klockner. Unlike the first two — a 15-13 loss to Syracuse and a 13-11 triumph over Princeton — Virginia’s defense saved the day by throwing a wet blanket over the opposition.
“I feel like we’re starting to come together as a defense,” said senior defenseman Mark Koontz. “I feel like we let the team down the last couple games by giving up more than 10 goals. We never want to do that.”
On Tuesday, Koontz and company kept the Cavaliers from suffering a discouraging defeat. Sophomore goalie Tillman Johnson made 10 saves and Virginia never trailed.
But the Fighting Irish (1-3), who lost six starters from last year’s national semifinalists, also played superb defense and got 17 saves from junior Nick Antol. They appeared on the verge of an upset when freshman attackman’s Brian Giordano’s second goal with 3:27 remaining tied the game at 5.
Virginia won the ensuing faceoff, however, and junior midfielder Billy Glading fired in an eight-yard shot with 1:45 left after taking a pass from Chris Rotelli. It was UVa’s first goal since Glading scored in the opening minute of the second half — a drought of nearly 28 minutes.
“That was just a great play by Chris,” said Glading. “He drove from behind and drew the defense out. I tried to hang outside and find the seam.”
“We got a cut inside, which is what we had been talking about all day, and got a goal from one of our top kids,” Starsia said.
“We made the plays to win the game, which is something that doesn’t always happen. It speaks well of this team.”
Senior midfielder Brenndan Mohler also scored two goals, including the clincher with 52 seconds remaining when Notre Dame extended its defense in an attempt to regain possession.
Otherwise, as Starsia said, “there wasn’t a lot of sparkle on offense for us.” Senior attackman Conor Gill was held pointless for the first time in two years, while freshmen attackmen Joe Yevoli and John Christmas each was limited to one first-quarter goal. Overall, the Cavaliers finished with their fewest goals since a 7-5 loss to North Carolina last April 7.
The Fighting Irish slid early on defense and kept the Cavaliers from dictating their movements.
“What they like to do is isolate people and dodge and create,” said Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan, a 1982 UVa graduate and former Cavalier assistant. “We didn’t want to get isolated. We always wanted to have somebody there when they started their dodges. We said, ‘Let’s go ahead and move early. Then we’ll know where we are.’”
Except for brief stretches, the Cavaliers did not get in an offensive flow. Yevoli and Christmas scored a minute apart late in the first quarter for a 2-0 lead. A.J. Shannon and Mohler notched Virginia’s only goals of the second quarter to make it 4-2 at the break.
“It was a day for us when we were a little stubborn moving the ball and very stubborn shooting the ball,” Starsia said. “We just weren’t quick enough or sharp enough or alert enough to make the next pass or make the play that would have resulted in a better opportunity than what we had.”
In the end, however, it was enough to make the Cavaliers leave the field wet but happy. Notre Dame’s enthusiasm was dampened by the result.
“We didn’t come here to come close. We came to win, so we’re disappointed not to get the ‘W’ today,” Corrigan said. “We’re not content getting close.”

UVa set for USC matchup

By ANDREW JOYNER
Daily Progress staff writer

Those teams in the NIT, including Virginia coach Pete Gillen’s squad, should take a close look at Alabama and Tulsa.
Those two teams played in the NIT finals last season, with the Golden Hurricane claiming the crown with a 79-60 victory over the Crimson Tide.
The combined record of those two teams this season? 52-13. Alabama (26-7) is the No. 2 seed in the NCAA’s south region and Tulsa (26-6) is the No. 12 seed in the east. In fact, of the last six NIT finalists and runner-ups, five have reached the NCAA tournament the following season.
Virginia’s own NIT history hints at similar correlation. The last three times the Cavaliers have gone to the NIT, they found themselves in the NCAA the next season. In 1980 and 1992 when the Cavaliers won the NIT, they reached at least the Sweet 16 the following season. In 1981, the Cavaliers in fact reached the Final Four.
Such results show why coaches claim a good showing in the NIT can serve as a springboard into the following season.
“It certainly can be a building block to next season. It gets postseason experience for the younger players and gives the seniors more games for exposure and gain more recognition. … It’s something you can use to build on,” Gillen said.
Of course, the NIT, no matter what advantages it can potentially provide, is still not the preferred destination of teams like Virginia and South Carolina that certainly had NCAA aspirations.
“I think you always want to go the NCAAs, win or lose, and give it your best shot,” Gillen said.
Now, Gillen’s task is to mentally prepare his team for playing in the NIT. For a team that went to the NCAAs last season and began the season seemingly destined to reach it again, motivation for playing in the NIT could be difficult.
“I don’t know. Sometimes teams are discouraged are disheartened and get knocked around,” Gillen said. “Hopefully, we’ll play hard with energy, enthusiasm and pride and let the chips fall where they may.”

S. Carolina vs. U.Va. fits NIT's needs, Odom says
By DOUG DOUGHTY, LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 13, 2002

Dave Odom has been around basketball too long not to be suspicious of the NIT pairings that will send his South Carolina team to Virginia for tonight's first-round game.

``I don't think there's anything that's happenstance about it,'' Odom said. ``The fact that I have not only Virginia ties, but Atlantic Coast Conference ties, and South Carolina having been (in the ACC) had some bearing on it.

``I would be surprised if there were more than four or five teams in the NIT field with higher RPIs than Virginia and South Carolina. Television probably said, `Look, if you want us to continue to cover the NIT on television, you've got to give us great first-round match-ups.'

``I think this one will get some people's attention.''

Odom went to South Carolina this season after 12 years at Wake Forest, where he was a three-time ACC Coach of the Year, but before that, he was an assistant at Virginia from 1982-1989.

Odom replaced current Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage on the U.Va. staff in 1982, then worked with Littlepage when he rejoined head coach Terry Holland's staff in 1988-89.

It was a double whammy for the Gamecocks (18-14) to be sent on the road for their 7:30 p.m. game with Virginia (17-12).

``Anytime you're talking anything devious, between Littlepage and Holland there's a lot of strings to be pulled,'' said Odom, who also has known U.Va. coach Pete Gillen for 25 years.

He used the word ``devious'' in jest, but he had no explanation for the NIT's decision not to give the Gamecocks a home game.

``That, I could not answer,'' Odom said. ``I'm sure we put in a very competitive bid.''

Virginia, a two-time champion, traditionally has drawn well for the NIT. In 2000, after the NCAA had snubbed them at 19-11, the Cavaliers drew 8,251 -- fewer than 200 under capacity -- for a first-round game with Georgetown.

South Carolina is just beginning to regain its fan support after eight seasons under Eddie Fogler.

The Gamecocks averaged nearly 10,500 spectators at home this year and that was before their run through the SEC tournament, where they upset Mississippi and 12th-ranked Kentucky before losing in the final minute to No. 8 Alabama in the semifinals.

It was a big lift for Odom, whose Gamecocks had lost 10 of 16 games after a 10-3 start.

``It's taken a lot of energy to get our system in and work through some of the things that needed adjusting,'' Odom, 59, said. ``That's what you expect when you take on a new challenge. It's the end of a year and this (spurt) has been like a booster battery for me.''

Wake Forest averaged 20 victories in Odom's 12 seasons, but Odom's contract was to have expired after this season and terms of a proposed extension were not exactly to his liking.

South Carolina couldn't have gotten to him at a better time.

``When you make a move at this stage of your career,'' Odom said, ``you do it because everything fits and you know it right away. To me, the key ingredients were a comparable league, a state university that held the same name as the state itself and a very minor geographical move.

``Lastly, it was a school that wanted to establish or re-establish -- as the case may be -- a consistently competitive and winning basketball program. Once the opportunity was presented to me, it took me a very, very short time to say, `It's right for me and my family. Let's go for it.' ''

If he had not been at an ACC school, two openings that would have attracted Odom's interest were at North Carolina State in 1996 and Virginia in 1998. He is particularly well-liked in Charlottesville, despite 12 seasons on the opposing bench.

``We'll be really happy to see him,'' Holland said, ``but we preferred that it was in the third round or later.''

Gamecocks vs. Cavs made for television?

Odom knows UVa better than Gillen, Cavs do Gamecocks
By Steve Argeris
The News & Advance
CHARLOTTESVILLE - Virginia has a chance to give the 11-game monkey on its back a shove tonight, playing South Carolina in the first round of the NIT.

It's been that long since the Cavaliers upset Kansas in the Sweet 16 of the 1995 NCAA Tournament, the last time that Virginia won a postseason game. While the Cavaliers had bigger plans this year - a second straight NCAA Tournament trip comes to mind - settling for a win tonight would be a first step in the right direction.

Whether Virginia (17-11) looks at the game as a consolation prize or a chance at redemption remains to be seen. Virginia coach Pete Gillen admitted Monday he had no idea if his players would be up for the game, considering the toll that the disappointment of losing nine of their past 12 games has taken on them.

"I wish I did have a sense for how our spirits are going to be," Gillen said. "Hopefully between now and 7:30 Wednesday we'll have them more motivated."

The NIT selection committee did them no favors by pairing them with South Carolina. The Gamecocks, coached by former Wake Forest chief and Virginia assistant Dave Odom, led the SEC in scoring defense, allowing 60.5 points per game. They are also a good 3-point shooting team, fourth in the SEC at 36 percent.

Chuck Eidson averaged an SEC-high 2.5 steals per game. The Gamecocks are led by Jamel Bradley, averaging 13 points per game and a 40.4 percent shooter from 3-point range. Aaron Lucas contributes 10.1 points per game. Rolando Howell averages 9.1 points and 5.6 rebounds per game. Then it's a host of role players.

The Gamecocks started out the season 10-3, but struggled through the SEC schedule, finishing 6-10 until rallying in time to make the SEC semifinal, nearly upsetting Alabama until a late, controversial no-call gave the Crimson Tide the game.

It is a matchup of the old Virginia style versus the new. Odom was a Terry Holland assistant, and plays the same kind of game that Holland and his successor, another Holland protegee, Jeff Jones, employed. It puts a premium on possessions and offers hard defense without the ball pressure of Gillen.

And it is not an easy task for the Cavaliers, who have struggled on offense at times this season. The other, added bonus that Odom has is that he had played Virginia twice a year for the past 12 years; he knows most of the Cavaliers' key personnel from preparing to face them at Wake Forest.

"Though Pete knows me and they know our style, he probably doesn't know my players as well as I know his," Odom said. "That's a slight advantage, given that we have to play away from home."

Just before closing of business Tuesday, there were still 5,000 or so tickets available at $12 apiece, $6 to college-age students or younger. The Georgetown NIT game two years ago drew nearly a sellout crowd. The Virginia student body is on spring break this week.

"Hopefully we can get a good crowd like the one we had for the Georgetown game," Gillen said. "A lot of fans who normally couldn't see a game up close can get tickets for this one."

His suitemate has a key to Cole Field House, which means life is good. Life is good because he can go there on Thanksgiving eve or Duke eve and shoot the night away, shoot until 1 in the morning. In fact, the later the better, and the emptier the better, because then it’s his field house, capacity: one. At 1 in the morning, he can lie down at midcourt, using the ball as his throw pillow, and piece together the last five years. The job at the docks. The SAT fiasco. Coach K. The dumbasses from UVa. At 1 in the morning, he can shut his eyes in that field house and think of everything and nothing. How his parents and Len Bias are the same, how he and Len Bias are the same, how Duke and Maryland are the same.

Some players come out of school early, but this one is coming out late. It took him five years to get this done, to become not only his university’s most accomplished player, but also its most resilient. Only Juan Dixon has a video library of every Maryland game this season. Only Juan Dixon is up at 2:30 a.m. breaking down Mike Dunleavy’s head fakes. Only Juan Dixon cleans up after his suitemates. Only Juan Dixon can get away with calling his coach G-Dub. Only Juan Dixon knows what Duke knows.

If there is one player this March who can look into Jason Williams’ eyes and not buckle at the knees, it is the 23-year-old shooting guard with “Nita and Phil” tattooed over his left biceps. Those are the names of Dixon’s parents, both dead of complications from AIDS. And those are the reasons the son they left behind is the most tough-minded player in college basketball.

After this semester, Dixon will need only a three-credit internship to finish his degree in family studies, even though his life is a family study in itself: His parents were habitual drug users who caught HIV from dirty needles and died 13 months apart between 1994 and ’95. But that story’s already been told. What hasn’t been told is that before a game at Virginia on Jan. 31, a few Cavaliers fans behind the basket began the vile chant “Crackhead parents ... Crackhead parents.” What hasn’t been told is that Dixon, normally stone-faced, nearly climbed into the stands after them.

“I was about to yank one of them fans up,” he says. “They definitely crossed the line. I’m serious -- I was about to yank one of them dudes up.”

Instead, he told them politely to knock it off, and when they didn’t, he told them impolitely: “I walked up to one guy a couple of times, like, ‘Dude, you better watch your mouth or I’m gonna end up doing something to you.’ They kept on doing it, man. Those people are ignorant, man. That’s fine, though. I mean, if that’s their way to get me out of my game, then next time they better be careful. They better be waaaaay back in the stands somewhere to say something like that, because that’s cruel, man.”

Eventually, Dixon shut them all up -- by hitting a baseline teardrop to put Maryland ahead for good in the final 31 seconds. He’s hit a lot of those shots in his career. At 1 a.m. At 1 p.m. You name it.

They said goodbye to his field house the other night, after 47 years. They said goodbye to Juan Dixon, too, after five. The first time Maryland laid eyes on him, he was a 140-pound stick figure who could score. Today, he’s a 165-pound stick figure who did score: 2,000 points and counting. He’s on the cusp of breaking Len Bias’ school scoring record (2,149), and there’s irony in that. Bias was killed by a drug overdose; Dixon grew up confiscating heroin needles from his parents. And now here’s Dixon maybe surpassing Bias as the greatest Terp of all time.

“Could be,” says his coach, Gary Williams, when asked if that’s a fair assessment. G-Dub points toward the jerseys hanging far up in the rafters at Cole. “Let’s see. That’s Joe Smith, Walt Williams, Bias, Albert King, Buck Williams, John Lucas, Tom McMillen, Len Elmore, Gene Shue. None of those guys got to the Final Four, did they?”

If nothing else, Dixon is the most self-made Maryland star of all, one who, in some sense, has no business being here. While he was growing up in Baltimore, his parents were laying down the law one day, behind bars the next. He remembers finding their drug paraphernalia stashed in the basement and behind ceiling tiles, remembers taking their needles straight to the trash. He remembers never entering his mother’s bathroom -- “We knew she was using in there” -- and he remembers her in the hospital, looking half-dead.

It could have derailed him, but there was a certain structure in the Dixon home. The four children -- Phil III, Juan, Nicole and Jermaine -- had to stay off the living room couch, or else. They had to fold their clothes, or else. They had to finish their schoolwork, or else. One time at a baseball game, young Phil ran through a third base coach’s sign, and was spanked by his father for it. The Dixons had to be coachable, or else.

As he got older, Juan learned that his mother, Juanita (or Nita), had been raised a strict Jehovah’s Witness, but she rebelled when she began dating Phil Jr. He learned that his father was an educated man who tried to be a street con, but was ostracized for his light skin. He learned that his father often got into fights and that, to fit in, Phil Jr. ended up doing drugs. It all turned Juan into a 30-year-old teenager.

“Basketball saved me,” Dixon says. But so did these lessons of Baltimore: He remembers his father earning an associate in arts degree from Maryland while in prison. He remembers visiting his father’s deathbed with Phil III, and hearing an edict: Graduate yourself.

“Yes, our parents were addicts, but they weren’t bad parents,” says Phil, now a Baltimore cop who mentors children at the local Police Athletic League. “The worst thing we had to do was sit in the car and wait for them to go buy their drugs and come back. Sometimes, it’d be two hours and I’d take it out on Juan and Nicole. I’d cuss at them. I mean, sitting in one spot for so long can be annoying. But they wouldn’t have left us alone if we couldn’t handle it.”

Juan Dixon handled it, better than anyone knows. He remembers, not long after attending his parents’ funerals, being recruited to join a drug ring at the age of 17: “This guy said, ‘Come sling some drugs. Make some easy money. Come work with me.’ And I passed it up. I just wanted to lead a good life.”

His goal was to play on TV, for Maryland. But he had to graduate from high school first, and a business class was holding him up. His girlfriend’s mother, Gladys Bragg, had taught marketing at Morgan State, and she tutored him through it. But his SAT score, 840, was too low to get him into Maryland, and when that dropped to 690 on his second try, he spent the fall semester after high school cramming for a third test. He worked a minimum-wage job at the Inner Harbor during the day, tying up boats and distributing dock passes, and he studied with Bragg at night. He raised his score to 1060, a leap so high that the College Board negated it. Bragg and other family members petitioned on his behalf, but Juan said, “Miss Gladys, I’ll just take the test again.” He didn’t have to, because the board soon reversed its decision, but he went ahead anyway and scored 1010 the fourth time, proving his point. He enrolled at Maryland at midseason. Dixon was finally a Terp.

After redshirting in 1997-98, he spent the next year as Steve Francis’ backup. That’s why no one knew what to make of him, not until that day at Cameron Indoor Stadium his sophomore season. “The game that put me on the map,” he says. At the time, Duke had grown used to toying with Maryland, but Dixon had 31 points on 14-of-19 shooting, and the Terps won by 11. Afterward, Mike Krzyzewski said that, outside his own team, Dixon was his favorite player.

“Well, outside of G-Dub,” Dixon says, “Coach K is my favorite coach.”

He badly wanted to close the gap with Duke, and there were times during his junior season that he sensed the teams were equal. But then came the game at Cole, the night when Maryland blew a 10-point lead with 54 seconds left, the night Dixon began to obsess about Duke. He returned to his room that evening and watched the tape until 2 a.m. He watched it again before the rematch at Cameron -- but turned it off with 55 seconds left. He studied every Blue Devil and his tendencies: He noticed that Duke didn’t run an offense as much as let players drift to their favorite spots on the court, and he memorized every one of their tricks. “A day before we went down there, he watched the clip tape of Duke’s offense,” says a team manager, Brian Cavanaugh. “And he said, ‘I’m going to get seven or eight steals.’ ”

Dixon ended up with five -- to go with his 28 points -- in another 11-point Terps victory, and fans back in College Park renamed Duke’s home court Dixon Indoor Stadium. He knew then that his new field house ritual was working. Weeks before, after a devastating home loss to Florida State, he had stayed at Cole shooting until 1:30 a.m. He then started calling Cavanaugh, who had a key to the place, three nights a week. He’d shoot, mostly alone, into the early-morning hours, particularly on nights before a game. “You know how you get an urge for a candy bar at 2 a.m.?” says his brother Phil. “Juan would get an urge to shoot at 2 a.m.”

Sometimes he’d bring his girlfriend of six years, Robyn Bragg, to rebound. She’d hold a broom straight up for him to shoot over, and every time he’d miss, he’d diagnose the reason: “My shoulder wasn’t lined up” or “my fingers were off base.” Before he’d leave, he’d lie down flat on his back at midcourt “just to dream.” That was his routine straight through the team’s Final Four run.

By the start of this season, it was Juan, Robyn and Brian against the world. Bragg began taping every game. Cavanaugh moved into Dixon’s suite. “He knocks on my door at 11:30 at night a lot,” Cavanaugh says. “He’ll knock real light and say, ‘I know you’re in there. Come on, set the hoops real quick, man.’ He even did it on Thanksgiving. But he’s only woken me up twice.”

Dixon’s teammates respect his late-night diligence. They tolerate his other eccentricities. They notice how he brings his own toilet paper to the locker room -- “I guess the regular toilet paper is a little too hard,” forward Tahj Holden suggests -- and how he brings his own soap and shower shoes. They notice how he gets pregame manicures and how he reshowers 45 minutes before every game, and washes his hands again after pregame warmups, and how he lotions his hands right before tipoff. “That’s why sometimes the ball slips out of his hands,” says backup guard Drew Nicholas. “If you watch during games, sometimes he’ll go to shoot, and the ball just goes flying off in the air. I mean, lotion’s a lubricant. But I think someone’s convinced him to start using powder now.”

Nicholas is also one of Dixon’s suitemates, which means he hears constant complaints about the mess in the kitchen. “Oh, my god,” Robyn says. “Juan’s so clean he doesn’t have trash in his trash can. If there’s four pieces of trash in there, he’ll empty it. He says a trash can’s for decoration.” Adds Robyn’s mother, Gladys: “One day he was at our house and I was cleaning a little, and he said, ‘I’ll help you.’ I said, ‘What?’ ” He’s so clean he’s been known to bring plastic forks and knives to restaurants, or ask waitresses for hot water so he can wash the utensils. “I’m just clean,” he says. “I got that from my parents.”

So these are Juan Dixon’s obsessions: cleanliness and Duke, not necessarily in that order. Just last month, before another game with the Blue Devils, he walked into G-Dub’s office and lobbied the coach to put 6'10" Chris Wilcox on Dunleavy. Dixon had been studying Duke tapes in the middle of the night -- “I’ll get up to get something to drink at 2:30,” Nicholas says, “and he’s sitting there watching our games” -- and had concluded that Wilcox’s wingspan could hinder Dunleavy’s outside game. He then gave Wilcox a rundown on Dunleavy’s pump fakes. Sure enough, Wilcox held Dunleavy to 11 points. Dixon had 17, and Maryland won by 14. The night before, of course, he’d been at Cole, shooting with Robyn until 11:30.

So maybe that’s Juan Dixon’s other legacy: the Cole Field House electric bill.