sabres.gif (4521 bytes)

Gillen returning to his roots with NIT game in Garden
Virginia takes on St. John's Monday
By Dave Johnson
Daily Press
Published March 23, 2003

He'd rather have a home game, and quite frankly he's a bit nervous about traveling to a large city in these uncertain times. But Virginia coach Pete Gillen also is returning to his roots as the Cavaliers visit St. John's Monday night in the NIT's second round.

Gillen grew up in Brooklyn, about 40 minutes from Queens, where the St. John's campus is located. He remembers rooting for the Red Storm - or the Redmen, as they were called until 1994 - and even borrowing some tricks of the trade when he joined the coaching profession.

"I always loved Lou Carnesecca's style," said Gillen, referring to the legendary St. John's coach who retired 11 years ago. "We copied things from him. They were always the top team in New York City. That was before the Big East, and they'd bring teams like Marquette and Notre Dame to Madison Square Garden. We'd always try to take some things from them."

Monday night in Alumni Hall, Gillen will try to beat them. The Cavaliers (16-15) haven't done that under Gillen, losing handily to Mike Jarvis' team in December of 1998 and '99. A win this time would put Virginia in the NIT quarterfinals.

A month ago, St. John's looked nothing like a postseason team. The Red Storm had lost six out of seven games, including a 17-point setback at home to Virginia Tech, to fall to 12-12. But starting with a 72-71 upset of Duke in the Garden on March 2, St. John's (17-13) won five of its next six games. That included an 83-80 victory over Notre Dame in the Big East tournament.

"They beat Duke," Gillen said. "That's all you have to say. And I was very impressed with the way they beat Notre Dame."

St. John's has one of the nation's top scorers in 6-foot-1 guard Marcus Hatten, who is averaging 22.2 points on nearly 20 shots per game. Virginia doesn't have a natural defender for him, though reserve Jermaine Harper is probably the quickest possibility.

In Wednesday night's opening-round victory over Brown, Gillen was missing two players and had another three battling either illness or injury.

Center Jason Rogers (mononucleosis) is still out, but Gillen hopes 6-7 freshman Derrick Byars will be able to play.

Forward Elton Brown played only eight minutes because of a sprained knee, and Todd Billet hobbled around with a hip pointer.

Both are expected to be more effective Monday night. Travis Watson matched his career high of 29 points despite the effects of a stomach flu.
 

 

 

Terrible first period dooms No. 1 Virginia
By P.J. Martinez  / Daily Progress correspondent
March 23, 2003
 

BALTIMORE — If the top-ranked Virginia Cavaliers had a collective worst nightmare, it played out during the first quarter of Saturday’s showdown with Johns Hopkins. Feasting on rebounds, extra man opportunities, and mental mistakes by the Cavalier defense, the third-ranked Blue Jays sprinted to a five-goal lead at the close of the quarter, shutting out the vaunted Virginia offense in the process. When the air-horn mercifully signaled the end of the period, the Cavaliers’ six-game winning streak and number one ranking were living on borrowed time. And despite staging a furious second-half comeback to pull within a goal with less than two minutes to play, the Cavaliers were unable to overcome the early deficit, suffering their first defeat by the eventual score of 8-7 before a crowd of 7,241. “We shot ourselves in the foot so many times tonight,” said Virginia head coach Dom Starsia, “I think we were so amped up we just couldn’t function for a while. It wasn’t a question of our character, we just didn’t play smart.” Virginia’s bad dream started three minutes into the game, when senior attackman Bobby Benson scooped up a rebound and squirted an easy goal past Tillman Johnson. Sophomore Kyle Barrie then tacked on back-to-back goals to push the lead to three, and Conor Ford beat Johnson on a low bouncer to make it 4-0 with 1:46 to play in the period. JHU freshman midfielder Kyle Dowd put an exclamation point on the period, heaving a desperation shot past a bewildered Johnson with three seconds remaining in the quarter, putting Virginia on the ropes. “That was a fluke,” Starsia said, “I told the team coming into this game that we were probably going to have to withstand a surge from Hopkins. They obviously put an awful lot into this game.” However, the Cavalier defense rallied to play Hopkins to a scoreless tie in the second quarter, stopping the bleeding and leaving the door open for a Virginia comeback. Dormant for the entire first half, the Cavalier offense showed signs of life early in the third period when freshman attackman Matt Ward beat Hopkins goalie Rob Scherr to make it 5-1. Energized by their first score of the evening, the Cavaliers got goals from attackmen Joe Yevoli and John Christmas, sandwiched around a goal from Hopkins’ Kyle Harrison, to pull within 6-4 with 5:28 remaining in the third quarter. After goals Christmas traded goals with Hopkins middie Kevin Boland to make it 7-5 at the end of the period, the Virginia comeback torch was handed to senior middie Chris Rotelli, who scored two goals in the quarter, the second coming on an unassisted jump-shot from ten yards out to make it 8-7 with 1:28 to go. After the Cavaliers held for what looked to be the game’s final possession in the closing minutes, a Rotelli turnover gave the ball back to Hopkins with 22 seconds to play, but the Jays promptly turned the ball back to Virginia at the other end of the field. After taking a clearing pass from Johnson at the midfield line, Rotelli passed the ball to a wide-open Ward on the right wing, who fired the ball into the side of the cage as time expired. “It hit the side of the net,” Ward said, “The crowd thought it went in, but I knew it didn’t. Hopefully that will just be one of the many chances I’ll have to put a game away.”

 

 

Cavaliers try to succeed in Jarvis' house
By Jerry Ratcliffe  / Daily Progress sports editor
March 23, 2003

 

Mike Jarvis’ basketball team was at a crossroads back on Feb. 2, when St. John’s hosted Duke in Madison Square Garden. The Red Storm was 12-12 and was a decided underdog against the Blue Devils. But what happened that afternoon completely turned things around for New York City’s favorite college basketball team. Since upsetting Duke, the Storm has only lost one game. Jarvis now hopes that another such win over an opponent from the prestigious ACC might do even more wonders for St. John’s when the Red Storm hosts Virginia in the second round of the NIT. The two teams will meet Monday night in New York, but not in the Garden, where St. John’s normally plays its more important opponents. Instead, Virginia will play in more intimate surroundings, the 6,000-seat Alumni Hall on St. John’s campus in Jamaica, N.Y. “Alumni Hall is kind of like playing in Mike Jarvis’ living room,” quipped UVa coach Pete Gillen. No place like home Up until recently, Jarvis’ living room hasn’t been a very intimidating place. Instead, even by Jarvis’ admission, it has been a rather comfy place. “There’s no place like the Garden,” said Jarvis in a telephone interview on Friday. “But when people come to the Garden to play, they play their best basketball, so some of your home court advantage disappears.” The last time UVa played St. John’s, the game took place in the Garden with then-Cavalier prospect J.C. Mathis looking on. St. John’s won the game with a strong second-half performance, and Mathis later signed with Virginia, then transferred to Michigan. If either UVa or St. John’s plays a game in MSG this season, it will mean that one of those team advanced to the NIT’s Final Four, annually played in one of the nation’s most famous basketball venues. Monday’s game in Alumni Hall will be a rare one in terms of ACC participation. Virginia will become only the second ACC team to play a game on the St. John’s campus in the last 30 years (Clemson was the last back in the ‘70s). “We don’t always play the toughest teams here,” said Jarvis of his school’s arena. “It’s unusual that we play good teams like Virginia here.” A new atmosphere The Garden is obviously much bigger, which means more revenue and usually more exposure for St. John’s. While some teams play their best ball when they come to the Garden, others are sometimes so awestruck by finally having played a game in the celebrated arena, that they have difficulty focusing. Not so in Alumni Hall. “Usually we have a lot of people sitting on their hands,” said Jarvis about his home gym. “The good thing about the NIT and what the school has done, is that they’ve made a push to get more of the students into the seats, so I think we’ll have a good atmosphere for Monday’s game. It’s a real fun place to play.” Gillen wouldn’t complain if St. John’s fans sit on their hands for this meeting. But apparently, officials at the school located in Queens, addressed the problem for the Storm’s first round NIT game against Boston U. A new student section was created and according to junior guard Willie Shaw, “They were going crazy and we expect that same atmosphere on Monday night against Virginia.” Still, fans are not the Cavaliers’ problem. They thrived in a hostile atmosphere at Rutgers and at Maryland. They played well at Cameron Indoor Stadium and the crowd doesn’t get any more intimidating than that. Virginia is certainly good enough to beat St. John’s. The Cavaliers are playing some of their best basketball of the season. In their last three outings, UVa beat Maryland, fought Duke in a tough game, and defeated Ivy League runnerup Brown. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said his Blue Devils were lucky to get by the Wahoos. So, Gillen must convince his team that it can beat St. John’s on the road, something that Duke didn’t do because the Blue Devils showed virtually no focus, no intensity in that game. That bothered Krzyzewski more than the outcome itself. Meanwhile, St. John’s turned its whole season around by beating Duke. “If I knew we were going to beat [the Blue Devils], I would have scheduled them in December,” said Jarvis. “We probably would have won 20 games or more if I had. “The perception, especially in New York, is that Duke is the best team in the world,” Jarvis said. “Beating them does wonders for your confidence. There is an appreciation [by fans] for what you do. That win basically put us in a better frame of mind for the end of the season. Our season could have gone totally down hill if they had come in and drilled us. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation about this game because we wouldn’t have made the NIT.” Instead of the season taking a bad turn, St. John’s has won five of its last six, including wins over Duke, Rutgers, Miami, Notre Dame and Boston U. Perhaps the biggest reason why is rebounding. Jarvis likes his team because it has good chemistry, they play hard and they’ve been in position to win just about every game they’ve played this season. But the biggest change has been offensive rebounding. “That has made a huge difference in our team,” said Jarvis. Perhaps the key to Monday night’s game will be whether Virginia’s inside players: Travis Watson, Elton Brown, Nick Vander Laan and Jason Clark, can control the boards and keep the Storm from storming the offensive glass. If Virginia can do that and keep its poise in Jarvis’ living room, then perhaps a win over St. John’s could do for the Cavaliers, what beating Duke did for the Red Storm. A march to the NIT’s Final Four and a chance to play in the Garden with a young team would not only finish off this season on a positive note but be a springboard to next season.

 

 

Men's Lacrosse Falls To Johns Hopkins, 8-7
Joe Yevoli, Chris Rotelli and John Christmas score two goals apiece for the Cavs.
March 22, 2003

BALTIMORE, Md. - The Johns Hopkins University men's lacrosse team jumped to a 5-0 halftime lead, got a career-high 18 saves from senior goalie Rob Scherr and held off a furious second-half rally by top-ranked Virginia as the Blue Jays knocked off the Cavaliers, 8-7 in front of 7,241 at Homewood Field Saturday night. The Blue Jays improve to 4-1 and have won their last four games and six of their last eight against teams ranked number one, while Virginia slips to 5-1 and had a four-game winning streak against the Blue Jays snapped.

Hopkins jumped to a quick 2-0 lead as Bobby Benson and Kyle Barrie scored in the first 4:02 of the game. Benson's goal at the 11:59 mark came off a rebound, while Barrie took a perfect pass from Conor Ford on the doorstep and slipped his 10th goal of the season past Virginia goalie Tillman Johnson.

Barrie pushed the lead to 3-0 with just under five minutes remaining in the second quarter when he scored an extra man goal on an assist from Kevin Boland. Ford pushed the lead to 4-0 with 1:46 remaining when he netted his first goal of the season off a feed from Kyle Harrison and that looked like it would be the score at the end of the quarter. However, Hopkins freshman Kyle Dowd picked up a loose ball 30 yards from the goal in the finals seconds and threw the ball at the goal, where it skipped past a surprised Johnson with just three seconds left in the quarter to make it 5-0.

A scoreless second quarter saw the Cavaliers outshoot Hopkins, 12-5, but Scherr registered eight of his 18 saves in the period to send the game to halftime with Hopkins holding a 5-0 lead.

Virginia wasted little time climbing back in the game in the third quarter as the Cavs outscored the Blue Jays, 5-2 in the period. Freshman Matt Ward's ninth goal of the game, off a feed from sophomore Joe Yevoli broke the ice for UVa with 11:19 remaining in the period and Yevoli made it 5-2 with an unassisted goal less than two minutes later. Harrison pushed the lead to 6-2 for the Blue Jays less than one minute later when he bounced a shot past Johnson, but two goals by John Christmas and another by Yevoli were answered only by an extra man goal by Boland in the final 7:31 and the game went to the fourth quarter with JHU leading 7-5.

The two-goal lead for the Blue Jays lasted less than one minute as senior Chris Rotelli scored his 14th goal of the season off another assist from Yevoli to make it 7-6. The score remained 7-6 until junior Joe McDermott netted his second goal of the season with 8:07 remaining with the assist on the play going to freshman Greg Peyser. The Blue Jays held that lead until Virginia made its final push.

Rotelli came from behind the goal and beat Scherr up high with 1:28 remaining to make it 8-7. The Cavaliers won the ensuing faceoff and maintained possession for over a minute until Rotelli threw an errant pass that sailed out of bounds. With less than 15 seconds remaining, the Blue Jays nearly lost possession in their own end before senior Michael Peyser threw the ball the length of the field in an attempts to kill of the remaining time. Johnson came up with the ball and Virginia quickly worked it to Ward, whose shot as time expired hit the outside of the net.

Barrie led the Blue Jays with his two goals, while Ford, Boland and Harrison all had one goal and one assist. The 18 saves for Scherr ties his career high, which he previously set against Notre Dame in the 2001 NCAA Quarterfinals.

Yevoli had two goals and two assists to pace the Cavaliers, while Rotelli and Christmas each had the two goals. Ward added one goal and one assist, while Johnson made 10 saves in goal.

Johns Hopkins will next be in action at North Carolina next Saturday, while the Cavaliers will host Maryland next Saturday.
 

 

 

Jays' defense turns No. 1 Virginia blue in 8-7 win
Up 5-0, Hopkins holds on after collapse at Syracuse
By Jeff Zrebiec
Sun Staff
Originally published March 23, 2003

A week's worth of soul-searching by Johns Hopkins' defense did the Blue Jays plenty of good last night.
Embarrassed after surrendering 15 goals and blowing a six-goal lead to Syracuse last week, the fourth-ranked Blue Jays clamped down on equally dangerous Virginia, holding the top-ranked Cavaliers scoreless in the first half before holding on for an 8-7 victory before 7,241 at Homewood Field.

The Blue Jays, who led 5-0 at halftime, survived a furious Cavaliers rally and were finally able to exhale when Matt Ward's desperation shot from 15 yards as time expired hit the outside of the net.

Seeing the net move, several Cavaliers celebrated on the sideline, but after a short pause, it was the Blue Jays who rushed the field and had the real reason to celebrate.

"I don't know about that last shot," said a relieved goalie Rob Scherr, who tied a career high with 18 saves, including 12 in the first half. "I thought I had that inside post covered. We're very fortunate I didn't have to make a save on that last one."

The victory over the top-ranked Cavaliers (5-1), coupled with losses yesterday by No. 2 Maryland and No. 3 Syracuse, makes the Blue Jays (4-1) the likely No. 1 when The Sun/Channel 2 poll is released this week.

Sophomore Kyle Barrie had two goals for Hopkins, but the story was clearly the Blue Jays' defensive effort. Virginia came into the game averaging just under 14 goals a game, but the Blue Jays, still smarting from last week's meltdown at the Carrier Dome, made life very difficult for the Cavaliers.

"Needless to say, it was a long week in practice for our defense," said Blue Jays coach Dave Pietramala, whose team broke a four-game losing streak to the Cavaliers. "They were constantly reminded of letting up 10 goals in one half. I was very proud with our goalie and our defense tonight, and our offense helped a lot, too."

The Cavaliers were held in check by defenders Chris Watson, Michael Peyster and Tom Garvey and an off-and-on zone defense, which forced the Cavaliers into a handful of ill-advised long shots, which Scherr gobbled up.

"The defense was forcing them to shoot from 10, 11 and even 12 yards out," said Scherr, a McDonogh alum. "I was seeing them in all the way. My defense kept us together today."

Said Virginia coach Dom Starsia: "There was a sense that maybe we weren't going to get one by this kid. He was just terrific in the cage."

Meanwhile, Hopkins' offense got going early. Senior Bobby Benson pushed home a rebound of Joe McDermott's shot 3:01 into the game to open the scoring.

It was 2-0 a minute later when Barrie converted Conor Ford's nifty feed past Cavaliers goalie Tillman Johnson (10 saves).

Scherr then made a beautiful reaction save on Matt Poskay at the doorstep and the Blue Jays caught a nice break to close the quarter.

With the time winding down, freshman midfielder Kyle Dowd fired a shot from about 30 yards that skipped past Johnson to make it 5-0 after Barrie's second goal and one by Ford.

Virginia finally got on the scoreboard with Ward's goal at 11:19 of the third quarter, and the comeback progressed from there with two goals each from Joe Yevoli and John Christmas in the third quarter.

Chris Rotelli made the score 8-7 with just 1:28 to play in the game and Virginia's Jack de Villiers won the ensuing faceoff, but Rotelli's pass sailed out of bounds with 20 seconds left.

The Cavaliers regained possession, but Ward just missed sending the game into overtime.

"We just made too many mistakes to win this game in the end," Starsia said.

Pietramala saw it differently. "This was a good win and now we have two very good wins," he said, referring to his team's season-opening victory over Princeton. "That's certainly going to help us when the NCAA tournament selection committee meets."