UVa lacrosse twinbill starts at noon
By Andrew Joyner / Daily Progress staff writer
April 2, 2005

Last Saturday, the Virginia lacrosse programs had key matchups in separate locations and met mixed results.

The Virginia men fell 9-7 to top-ranked Johns Hopkins in Baltimore while the Virginia women dispatched Princeton 8-4 at Klockner Stadium.

Today, both programs find themselves in the same location, again in pivotal contests.

The No. 2 Virginia women host No. 5 Duke at noon while the No. 3 Virginia men host No. 4 Maryland at 3 p.m.

The Virginia women (6-1) certainly want to maintain their momentum, but for the Virginia men (6-1) the goal is regaining it.

“I think everyone feels like that we want to bounce back. I don’t think our opponent really matters. We just want to get back on the right track,” Virginia coach Dom Starsia said.

In its contest against Hopkins, Virginia trailed for most of the contest but did rally in the fourth quarter to get within a goal. The Blue Jays, however, scored the decisive goals down the stretch. Virginia seemed just a tad out of sync offensively as it was unable to convert some chances throughout the game and certainly down the stretch.

“We look back at the game and think there were certainly some things we could have done better,” Starsia said. “It was a little bit of missed opportunity but now we must get back on that right track this week.”

The Cavaliers’ desire might be to face any opponent to get back on that right track but the opponent they will face today no doubt doubly garners their interest.

The Virginia-Maryland rivalry is particularly intense. Obviously, it’s a key ACC matchup but the two programs have so many crossover connections in terms of personnel. Virginia’s roster is comprised of many players from the lacrosse-rich state of Maryland and many of those players were high school teammates or foes of many on Maryland’s roster.

“I think this game gets their attention right away. It’s not hard to get excited to play in these games because you know each other so well. … These games tend to be passionate and physical,” Starsia said. “There is a certain in-bred nature between the two programs. We don’t have to do a lot to get them excited for the Maryland game.”

If there need to be any extra incentive, Maryland defeated Virginia twice last season. First, the Terps trounced the Cavs 11-2 in College Park and then edged them 12-11 in the ACC title game. That first setback in some ways was a microcosm of Virginia’s 5-8 season last year while the second loss ended any hopes of Virginia reaching the NCAA Tournament.

Needless to say, that will be on the Cavaliers’ minds when the opening faceoff arrives.

“We clearly did not play well in that first game with Maryland. The whole game snowballed on us and it was probably the most disappointing effort of the year,” Starsia said.

Added junior attackman Matt Ward with a telling grin: “I don’t think it will be 11-2 this time.”

As for the Virginia women, they have their own meaningful showdown with an ACC foe. Duke has risen to No. 5 in the nation and has won three straight contests, including an 18-1 rout of Stanford last weekend.

“Duke is always a great team and I think both programs are really ready to play a great game against each other. It will be a battle and a real physical game,” Virginia coach Julie Myers said. “It’s always an exciting matchup and whoever is going to win will have to play a great game.”

The victory over Princeton certainly provided the Cavaliers a little momentum but that’s not to imply it’s allowed their thoughts to drift.

“I think the Princeton game was a big game and a confidence booster and it’s nice to play a real solid team and come out on top but I don’t think it makes us jump ahead and start looking at the end of the season,” Myers said. “We keep putting quality wins together and we still need to be playing better lacrosse.”

Note. Former St. Anne’s-Belfield standout Danielle Freedman is a junior defender for Duke. Freedman, a first-team All-Central Virginia selection while at STAB, has played in four contests this season for the Blue Devils.

Boland has sights set on No. 1 for UVa
By Jerry Ratcliffe / Daily Progress sports editor
April 2, 2005

When Virginia lost to Baylor at the National Indoor Tennis Championship match in Chicago about six weeks ago, Cavaliers coach Brian Boland ordered a team manager to take care of the runners-up trophy.

Boland didn’t even want to touch it. The only hardware he cares to handle will have No. 1 emblazoned upon it.

If he has his way, it won’t be too much longer before he clutches such a trophy to his chest. Virginia’s meteoric rise through the men’s collegiate ranks has been well documented during Boland’s four years on the job.

His enthusiasm as coach has spread through the ranks of the school’s tennis boosters and inspired enough of the nation’s, even the world’s elite, high school talent to buy into what Boland sells. No. 2 is not on his list of goals.

“That’s part of me,” Boland said Friday as he prepared his team for today’s ACC match against Miami. “There is a big part of me that wasn’t satisfied with being second place. My drive is to be the best and I want that to rub off on our players.”

A new standard

Virginia’s tennis program had been decent in recent years, but is now starting to pop up in the same breath as Georgia, Stanford, Baylor and the other powers of the sport.

“That feels great and was something I expected when I came here,” Boland said. “I felt it would eventually happen. I didn’t know when it would happen, but now we’re here and we intend to stay.”

The Cavaliers only two losses this year have both come against No. 1-ranked Baylor, the latest a 4-3 battle stat started in Waco, Texas, and ended nine hours and 80 miles later in Ennis, thanks to some untimely weather that forced the matches to move to the nearest indoor courts, nearly an hour-and-a-half drive. When UVa lost to Baylor in Chicago back in late February, the Cavs defeated three top 10 teams to reach the finals against the unbeaten Bears.

Currently ranked No. 3 nationally (the Cavs had climbed to No. 2 before the most recent loss to Baylor), Virginia hosts Miami today. The UVa women open against No. 6 Georgia Tech at noon, followed by the men’s matches, around 4 or 5 p.m. Weather could force the matches inside at Boar’s Head.

It starts with recruiting

When Boland first took over the program, he said he believed so much in what the University of Virginia stood for that it was easy to sell recruits on the program. His first recruiting class was star-studded and brought enough momentum to help him swing the program in the right direction.

He has continued to recruit hard and use that momentum, all the while developing chemistry among his players and devoting much of his and his assistant’s time to teaching his talented players how to improve.

“My goal was to put the program in position to compete for national championships year after year,” Boland said.

People used to hear him say that and wondered what kind of meds the coach might have been on. Now, everyone is a believer.

“The goal is now to sustain,” Boland said. “To do that, you have to have all the things that we’re starting to build. The facilities have improved, the support from the community and everyone around the program has been enthusiastic, and the university is committed to be the best. I’m in the right place at the right time.”

Any program’s lifeblood is recruiting and the energetic coach devotes a great deal of time to that phase of his program on a daily basis. Like his football counterpart, Al Groh, Boland enjoys the recruiting process, getting to know the prospects and their families.

While he has grabbed his share of blue-chippers, he’s equally proud of helping players like Darrin Cohen, a junior from Lafayette, Calif., develop into a top-notch threat.

“Darrin wasn’t recruited as heavily as some of the others, but now he has risen to a top 50 player in the country,” Boland said. “You need some of the best recruits, but you also need to improve and develop all the players on the team.”

Maybe that’s why Virginia’s program leaped from one of the top 50 programs in the country to No. 10 at the end of last season, to currently No. 3 with a lot of the season yet to be played out.

“You have to have the players, but they have to improve and develop and your chemistry is very important,” the coach said. “No matter how talented you are, you have to have chemistry and great leadership in the program.”

He credits his players for working hard and displaying leadership and working together for the common goal.

Virginia’s reputation is such in the collegiate tennis world that Boland can walk into any player’s living room and feel he has a shot at landing the kid.

“Year after year we have had success bringing in the very best American kids to look at UVa,” Boland said. “We’ve gotten some and lost some. But we have everything that allows us to recruit any kid around the country or around the world.”

While Boland has four Virginians on his roster, he also has four Californians, two Floridians, two Kentuckians, a player from India, another from Slovakia, and one each from Ohio, Texas and Illinois.

Much of his enthusiasm comes from within, but Boland credits his work ethic and discipline to his parents, and inspiration and support from his wife, Becky, and a life-long friend, Coach Jerry Sales of St. Cloud, Minn., who has taught tennis for more than 30 years while serving as a mentor to the UVa head coach.

He has learned to never be comfortable. The drive to get better is omnipresent.

That goes for playing Miami today and working to make his players peak at the NCAA Championships in May. He knows this Virginia team can compete with anybody in the country, that it’s now only a matter of putting everything together in the last couple of months and enjoying the journey.

“One thing I’ll never do ... I’ll never be satisfied,” Boland said. “If you’re fortunate enough to be ranked No. 1 in the country, you have to work even harder to stay there.”

That’s why he wanted no part of that No. 2 trophy. His dreams are reserved for No. 1.

Littlepage in no rush to replace Gillen
DailyPress.com
STAFF, WIRE REPORTS «
Published April 2, 2005

Marquee candidates such as Kentucky's Tubby Smith, Texas' Rick Barnes, West Virginia's John Beilein and the Golden State Warriors' Mike Montgomery appear unavailable, but Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage insisted Friday that his search for a basketball coach is progressing well.

Sitting courtside as the Final Four teams practiced, Littlepage, the incoming chairman of the tournament selection committee, exuded confidence and smiled broadly. He remained unwilling to discuss specific candidates but said he anticipates some traveling to Charlottesville to inspect Virginia's under-construction arena and meet with administrators.

Virginia forced Pete Gillen's resignation March 14, at which time Littlepage projected a four-to-six-week search. After 18 days, he's sticking to the timetable.

"I won't be rushed," he said.

Littlepage recited a long list of people he's consulting. Among them: former Virginia coach and athletic director Terry Holland, ACC associate commissioner Fred Barakat, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive.

Virginia is college basketball's most prestigious coaching vacancy and is the talk of the lobby at the hotel serving as headquarters for the National Association of Basketball Coaches convention. But reliable information is scarce and many wonder if, in the interest of secrecy, Littlepage is refraining from formal interviews during the Final Four.

Littlepage would not comment on his interview schedule.

Smith, Barnes, Beilein and Montgomery have said they are content in their current jobs, and Beilein agreed to a two-year contract extension Thursday. He coached West Virginia to the Elite Eight.