Champions at last
Cavs avenge last year's title-game loss to Tigers, win national championship
By Joe O'Gorman / Special to the Daily Progress
May 24, 2004
 

PRINCETON, N.J. - As she entered the postgame press conference, Caitlin Banks clutched the national championship trophy as though it held great wealth.

Although it didn’t represent anything financial, it did represent four years of sweat, a little blood, a few tears of disappointment and now for the University of Virginia, it represented the ultimate satisfaction in the world of women’s collegiate lacrosse - a dream come true.

“A national championship is what I’ve dreamt about my entire life and this is a great way to finish,” said Banks after the Cavaliers won the NCAA Division I national championship with a convincing, 10-4 win over Princeton on Sunday at Princeton Stadium before a crowd of 4,922.

The title is the third in school history and the first since 1993, but it is the first under Julie Myers in five tries.

The Cavaliers (19-3), who set a new school record for wins in a season, scored five straight goals in the first half to gain control and then had the answer, both offensively and defensively, to every Princeton spurt in the second half.

The Cavaliers got four goals from Amy Appelt, who now has 201 in her career. Banks added three, while Tyler Leachman had two and Nikki Lieb tallied a single score. The defense was led by goalkeeper Andrea Pfeiffer, who had a career best 19 saves.

“I’m incredibly proud of the entire team and their performance,” Myers said. “They executed the game plan perfectly and then added their own flavor to it. We did a great job of creating great opportunities, playing as a team and our defense was incredible. When Princeton was able to get their shots, Andrea Pfeiffer stepped up and made the save. It was a great effort.”

Few could compare to the performance by Pfeiffer, who denied Princeton (19-1) a chance for a third straight national title and earned the tourney’s Most Valuable Player honor in the process. Pfeifer was joined on the All-Tourney team by Banks, Appelt, Lieb and Elizabeth Pinney.

“We were well prepared coming into the game,” said Pfeiffer, who at one point made nine straight saves. “We knew their top shooters’ tendencies and our defense was well prepared. It was great momentum, if I made a save, the defense would get the ground ball. It all came together.”

It also washes away the hurt from last season when the Tigers rallied in the final minute to tie the game and then claimed the national championship, 8-7, in overtime over the Cavs.

“I felt that hurt so much last year,” Banks said. “All season, we’ve been saying ‘it was all about heart’ and we wanted this so bad. I’ve never lost faith in this team all season; we all wanted it so bad. We weren’t going to let anything stop us.”

The Tigers, who outshot Virginia 35-24, seemed to get the best of the early play, but all it had to show for it was a 1-0 lead with nearly 20 minutes gone in the initial half.

“That was a huge point in the game,” Myers said. ”They controlled the ball for almost 20 minutes and we were only down a goal. It was a huge plus in our favor. We just told the kids to keep working and the shots would start falling.”

They did and the goals started adding up.

UVa scored three in 86 seconds, as Leachman sandwiched a pair of scores around a great spin move for a goal by Appelt. Banks and Appelt then finished off the first-half scoring.

“That was awesome,” Banks said of the run. “It got us excited and we are a team that feeds off one good moment.”

The second half saw the Cavaliers score five goals on just nine shots and, in the process, remove the burden of four national title-game losses suffered by Myers.

“I’ve been incredibly lucky to be at Virginia,” Myers said. “I’ve surrounded myself with smart players and smart coaches. To finally be able to get one after nine years of trying is awesome.”

The coach might not be able to pry the trophy away from Banks, though.
 

Virginia will get No. 2 ACC seed
By Jay Jenkins / Daily Progress staff writer
May 24, 2004

On April 9, the Georgia Tech baseball team lost 9-7 to North Carolina to fall to 2-5 in the ACC.

Georgia Tech coach Danny Hall knew that his team might need to win everything the rest of the way in ACC play to have a shot at passing Virginia and winning the regular-season crown. Thanks to 16 straight wins in conference play, the Yellow Jackets pulled off the unthinkable on Sunday as they outscored Maryland 43-9 in three games to sweep the Terrapins and win the ACC regular-season championship.

By winning the regular-season crown, Georgia Tech will play Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. against the winner of Tuesday’s play-in game between Maryland (4-17 ACC) and Wake Forest (4-18) at Memorial Baseball Stadium in Salem.

“It’s a tremendous accomplishment. Anytime you line up and play everybody in your league and you finish first, it says a lot about your team,” Hall said in a released statement. “In particular, to start out 0-3 and then 2-5, and to get to where we are right now is a tremendous accomplishment for our team and our staff.

“It’s hard to win two games in a row [in the ACC], let alone this many in a row. It tells you how consistently that we have played as a team. I give our guys all the credit in the world. We were at a point at 21-17 where it could have gone either way, and they pulled it together down the stretch,” Hall added.

Virginia first-year coach Brian O’Connor said that Georgia Tech’s impressive finish should come as know surprise based on its preseason ranking.

“I knew Georgia Tech was a good ballclub. They are obviously showing that. In the preseason poll they were predicted to win it,” O’Connor said on Sunday. “I thought we did everything we could. We finished 18-6 and that was almost good enough to win it. We fell half-a-game short and that is baseball. We are very proud of what we have accomplished.”

“We were predicted to finish seventh in the preseason poll and finishing second by a half-a-game is something to be proud of.”

Virginia, which won an identical amount of league games as the Yellow Jackets (18) but had one more loss, will play seventh-seeded Duke (24-29, 8-16 ACC) on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

“We are going to have to take it one game at a time and get ready for Duke on Wednesday and not even concern ourselves with Georgia Tech,” O’Connor said. “We have to beat too many people, play too many people before that.”

In Wednesday’s other first-round contests, No. 4 Clemson will play No. 5 North Carolina at 10 a.m. and No. 3 Florida State will play No. 6 N.C. State at 8:30 p.m.

Virginia, which swept Duke in a three-game series on the road earlier this year, will advance to play the winner of the Florida State-N.C. State game if they defeat the Blue Devils. That semifinal contest would be on Thursday at 8:30 p.m.

“If we are fortunate enough to beat Duke on Wednesday, we will have to play Florida State or N.C. State and both of those teams beat us two out of three.” O’Connor said.

Should Virginia lose the opener, they would move into the losers’ bracket and need to win five straight games to win the tourney title.

O’Connor’s knows that his team will have to play well if they hope to win the first ACC title in program history since 1996.

 

Koshansky, O'Connor earn ACC player, coach accolade
By Jay Jenkins / Daily Progress staff writer
May 25, 2004

On the field this season, the Virginia baseball program moved into the upper echelon of the Atlantic Coast Conference with a 42-11 overall record, an 18-6 ACC mark and a second-place finish in the league.

On Monday, the respective head coaches from around the conference voiced their opinion on the Cavaliers’ impressive season by voting Brian O’Connor as the ACC Coach of the Year and Joe Koshansky as the ACC Player of the Year.

“It is an honor to be selected as the Coach of the Year and to have Joe Koshansky as the Player of the Year,” said O’Connor on Monday night from Salem, the host city of the ACC tournament. “You are recognized with the awards because of what the team has accomplished on the field. It’s also a great testament to the hard work of this entire coaching staff.”

O’Connor, who was named the UVa coach on July 8, 2003, after Dennis Womack retired following 23 seasons with the program, became only the second coach in program history to win the award. Womack won the award in 1985 after the Cavaliers went 9-4 and won the regular season crown.

“It is a tremendous honor,” said O’Connor, who was also named the 2001 Assistant Coach of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association while working at Notre Dame. “[The ACC] is a great league with a lot of great coaches and it is a tremendous honor for out entire coaching staff.”

Koshansky, a senior first baseman and starting pitcher, made program history by becoming the first Cavalier to be selected as the ACC Player of the Year. The Fairfax native was a three-time ACC Player/Pitcher of the Week selection this year and finished fourth in the league in ERA at 2.78 while holding opposing batters to a .217 batting average. Koshansky went 7-2 on the mound and tallied 15 home runs and a slugging percentage of .613 at the plate.

“This is a league that has a lot of very talented players,” O’Connor said. “There are 10 players in this league that could have won the Player of the Year. Joe Koshansky is very deserving of it because of what he can do on the mound and at the plate.

UVa third baseman Ryan Zimmerman joined Koshansky on the All-ACC first team and shortstop Mark Reynolds and starting pitcher Andrew Dobies were named to the league’s second team.

“Dobies, Reynolds and Zimmerman being selected All-Conference is a tremendous accomplishment for what those guys have done,” O’Connor said.

North Carolina’s Daniel Bard was named the ACC Freshman of the Year.
 

Tigers' reign ends
Monday, May 24, 2004
By MARK ECKEL
Staff Writer
PRINCETON TOWNSHIP - It was over when the fat man sang.

All through its perfect lacrosse season Theresa Sherry, Princeton's senior captain and second-leading scorer, sang the National Anthem before the game, went out scored some goals and the Tigers won.

Until yesterday's NCAA championship game.

Someone in the Princeton hierarchy contracted a professional singer, a hefty fellow named Jonathan White, to sing the anthem.

"I wanted to sing," Sherry said. "We did it that way all year. But they had somebody."

Sherry didn't sing, didn't score, and the University of Virginia thumped the No. 1 seed Tigers, 10-4, in front of 4,922 fans at Princeton Stadium.

The loss ended the Tigers' two-year reign as NCAA champions, their 28-game game winning streak and their 11-game NCAA Tournament winning streak.

All right, so Virginia's defense and goalkeeper Andrea Pfeiffer might have had more to do with the Tigers' loss than White's rendition of the anthem (although Sherry's version is better); still, why mess with a good thing at the most important time?

"I don't know," Sherry said.

Know this - the four goals Princeton scored matched the lowest amount in the 22-year history of the title game, going back to Temple's 6-4 win over Maryland in 1984.

And the six-goal loss was Princeton's worst since it lost the 2001 title game to Maryland, 14-7.

"We talked all year about the journey," Princeton head coach Chris Sailer said. "We would have liked a different destination. Things just didn't go our way today. We had a lot of opportunities. We just weren't able to convert."

Princeton took 35 shots for the game, 17 in the first half when it managed just one goal and trailed, 5-1.

"We take 35 shots, we're generally going to score some goals," Sailer said. "For the year I think we shot in the 40-percent range, so that would be some goals. Give their defense and their keeper credit, it just wasn't us."

Princeton (19-1) actually scored the first goal of the game when Elizabeth Pillion took a nice pass from Jamie Sundheim and beat Pfeiffer. That did not happen again for another 26:45.

"I take a lot of responsibility for missing a lot of shots," Sherry said. "(Pfeiffer) played a great game, but we gave her confidence by not scoring early on."

Pfeiffer, who recorded a career-high 19 saves, saw nine straight shots at one point in the first half and did not allow a goal.

"Moments like that you can't describe," the senior from Paoli, Pa., said. "You can't think about it, you just react. The ball looked good today. We were well-prepared. We knew their shooters' tendencies. It just all came together for us."

Pfeiffer and her Cavalier teammates had waited for this since losing in overtime to the Tigers in last year's title game. They had a chance during the regular season, but lost to the Tigers again.

"I wouldn't call it obsessed," Pfeiffer said about last year's loss. "We didn't even need to talk about it, though."

So Virginia didn't talk. Sherry didn't sing. The Cavs withstood an early Princeton barrage and then scored five goals in the final 11:10 of the half for the four-goal advantage.

Amy Appelt, who scored four goals on the day and finished the season with 90, had two of the five, while Tyler Leachman also had two.

Princeton closed to 5-2 on Kathleen Miller's goal early in the second half, but the Cavs answered. The Tigers got it to 6-3 on Lindsey Biles goal with 15:58 left, but the Cavs scored the next three goals to make it a rout.

"We never got a run," Sailer said. "We normally do. Today we didn't and they did."
 

Lame duck from start
Talk persists that ACC baseball coaches didn't want to come to Salem in the first place
By Doug Doughty

When the ACC elected to bring its baseball tournament to Salem for two years, in reality, it was only a one-year trial.

Before the teams paid their second visit to Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium, the ACC rejected Salem's bid to serve as host for a third year, which would have coincided with the ACC debut of neighboring Virginia Tech.

"I wish we'd had it for at least one year with Virginia Tech in the league," said Salem Director of Facilities Carey Harveycutter. "What we heard, basically, was that they wanted to go to an area where it was warmer."

Several coaches expressed surprise when the tournament was awarded to Salem, and talk persists that they didn't want to come to Salem in the first place.

Georgia Tech coach Danny Hall isn't sure if that was the case, but he concedes that the coaches had little input.

"I think the vote was pretty much between some of the athletic directors and the league office," Hall said last week. "We never took a vote as coaches. It was more of a discussion on the conference call. The one guy I remember talking was North Carolina's Mike Fox because he had coached there in the Division III World Series.

"That's generally what it was for all the sites. If a coach had been there or coached there, he was asked to tell the other coaches about it. It was about a week after our conference call that we got a memo about the tournament going to Salem. It was pretty much of a surprise because we didn't feel we had a lot of input."

When the prospective hosts submitted bids this year, they went before a committee that included several ACC coaches. The 2005 ACC Baseball Tournament subsequently was awarded to Jacksonville, Fla.

The notion that Salem was a cold-weather site seems particularly humorous in light of temperatures in the high 80s this past weekend. However, rainy weather - or, rather the threat of rain - almost doomed last year's tournament.

Rainy weather is also likely this week during the tournament. Thunderstorms are in the forecast for five of the seven scheduled days, with a 50-percent chance of rain predicted on Wednesday and Monday, according to weather.com.

Last year after electing not to play any of four games scheduled for Wednesday, when there was negligible precipitation, ACC officials nearly were forced to abandon a double-elimination format.

"Unfortunately, the weather did what it did," Florida State coach Mike Martin said, "but that could happen anywhere. In fact, it seems to rain every time we host a regional down in Tallahassee."

Last year's tournament had a dramatic conclusion, with Georgia Tech coming out of the loser's bracket and winning three games on the final day, the last one ending several minutes before the biggest rainstorm of the week.

Officials had made contingency plans, holding open Kiwanis Field, located six-tenths of a mile from Memorial Stadium. Ideally, games could have been played at Memorial Stadium and Kiwanis Stadium at the same time, but the coaches vetoed that.

Kiwanis Field served as home of Salem's professional teams until 1995, but the coaches did not like the fact that light poles were located inside the fence. Future major-leaguers such as Dave Parker and John Candelaria played at Kiwanis Field when it was named Municipal Stadium, but it didn't suit the ACC.

For one thing, the college players use aluminum bats and at Kiwanis Field, with its cozy dimensions, nearby homes might have been bombarded with baseballs.

"It's very good to have that there as a practice facility," Hall said. "You can have batting practice there before you play. I wouldn't have wanted to play any of the games there. Part of it was the poles, but the ball jumps out of there in a hurry."

This year, Salem has lined up Virginia Tech's English Field as an alternate site and games could be moved 40 miles to Blacksburg if postponements were to mount. Virginia Tech was not a member of the ACC last year and there were some hard feelings because ACC expansion talk did not include Tech at that point.

"Even if we had wanted to play, English Field did not have lights at the time," Harveycutter said.

Harveycutter does not have a master plan for returning the tournament to Salem, although he would submit a bid if asked. If there is a future for the tournament in Salem, it might hinge on this year's event. Last year's crowd of 16,517 was below the 20,990 who attended the 2002 tournament in St. Petersburg, Fla., but there were eight sessions at the former and nine at the latter.

"I would not have been opposed to coming back [for a third season] in Salem," said Hall, whose sentiments were echoed by Martin. "Everything considered last year, the grounds crew and tournament did an outstanding job just to get the tournament in."
 

UVa. women pull out stops, roll to title
Pfeiffer makes 19 saves, as Cavs end Princeton's 2-year NCAA reign, 10-4
By Katherine Dunn
Sun Staff
Originally published May 24, 2004

PRINCETON, N.J. - Virginia goalie Andrea Pfeiffer and her unheralded young defense stole the spotlight from previously unbeaten and No. 1 Princeton in yesterday's NCAA Division I women's lacrosse championship - and took the title as well.
Pfeiffer made a career-high 19 saves to stymie the two-time defending champion Tigers and lead the No. 2 Cavaliers to a 10-4 victory before 4,922 at Princeton Stadium. The Tigers (19-1) had been riding a 28-game winning streak, but the Cavaliers (19-3) were not intimidated, taking their first national title since 1993.

The tournament's Most Valuable Player, Pfeiffer broke the record for best save percentage in the Division I final. Her .826 mark came in well ahead of the .808 set by Maryland's Alex Kahoe in beating the Cavaliers in 1998. Only once before had a team been held to four goals in the championship - 20 years ago when Temple beat Maryland, 6-4.

"The ball looked good today," said Pfeiffer, a senior from Paoli, Pa. "We were really well-prepared coming in. We knew a lot of the top shooters, their tendencies. If I saved it, the defense would pick it up if it was a ground ball. It just all came together."

The strong defense and a four-goal outing for Amy Appelt helped the Cavaliers run up a 5-1 lead and avenge last year's 8-7 overtime loss to the Tigers.

Princeton got the better of play early but managed to put just one of its first 19 shots past Pfeiffer. She stopped 10 of those attempts.

The Tigers shot right at Pfeiffer several times and missed the cage eight times, thanks in part to the efforts of defenders Elizabeth Pinney, Ashley Dodson, Molly Urlock and Nikki Lieb.

"We were getting such great looks early on. We were just shooting wide or hitting the keeper," said Princeton coach Chris Sailer, "but you have to give Virginia some credit for that. When you shoot that poorly, you've got to think that the defense and the goalie are part of the reason. We can't say it's just us."

The Tigers, who had scored on 70 percent of their shots on goal coming into the game, continued to struggle offensively. They took 35 shots, and 12 of them missed the net altogether. The Cavaliers held Princeton All-America midfielder Theresa Sherry scoreless for the first time all season.

Princeton came into the game with the nation's top defense, allowing just 6.11 goals a game, but when Virginia struck, the momentum built quickly.

Tyler Leachman scored on a free-position shot with 11:10 left in the first half to tie the game 1-1. Appelt then spun off defender Lauren Vance at about 10 meters and side-armed a shot past Tigers goalie Sarah Kolodner. Another goal by Leachman gave Virginia three goals in less than a minute and a half.

Caitlin Banks and Appelt finished the half with two more goals, leaving the Tigers trailing 5-1 at the half, their largest deficit of the season.

Princeton, which went 26:45 without a goal, finally got one from Kathleen Miller early in the second half. Although the Tigers outscored the opposition 23-8 in the second half during the tournament's first three rounds, the Cavaliers had not lost a game they led at halftime all season. Yesterday, in the second half, Virginia matched every Tigers goal and then some.

Appelt, who yesterday became only the third player in Division I history to reach 90 goals in a season, set up several opportunities for her teammates, including a couple for Banks, who finished with three goals.

"I knew they were going to throw [double teams] pretty quickly, and that's fine because everyone I throw the ball to is going to catch it and score anyway, like Caitlin did. I think it's easier for me to feed the ball in to one of my attackers than try to have me beat three or four girls," said Appelt, who made the all-tournament team along with Pinney, Banks, Lieb and Princeton's Vance, Elizabeth Pillion (two goals) and Katie Norbury.
 

U.Va. yearns for host's role
Performance at ACC tournament holds key to NCAA destination
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER May 25, 2004

CHARLOTTESVILLE - Regardless of what happens this week in Salem, the University of Virginia baseball team will receive an invitation to the NCAA tournament. U.Va.'s 42 regular-season victories make it a lock for the 64-team field, which will be announced Monday.

Still, the Cavaliers, ranked seventh in the Collegiate Baseball poll, have ample motivation to shine at the ACC tourney, a double-elimination affair that begins tonight at Salem Memorial Stadium. U.Va. has bid to play host to a regional during the NCAA tourney's first weekend (June 4-6). Whether the NCAAs come to Charlottesville for the first time will depend in part on how Virginia (42-11) fares at the ACC tournament.

"We need to perform well to help our chances of receiving an NCAA regional," first-year coach Brian O'Connor said. "It's hard to say whether that means winning two games, three games, or what."

Second-seeded U.Va., which posted a school-record 18-6 mark in ACC play, meets No. 7 seed Duke (8-16, 24-29) tomorrow at 5 p.m. The Cavaliers have won 10 consecutive over the Blue Devils.

The deadline for schools to submit bids for NCAA regionals was Friday. U.Va. bid for one of the 16 opening-weekend regionals and also for one of the eight "super regionals" that will determine the participants in the College World Series. U.Va. could play host to a super regional only if it advances to the round of 16.

For now, Virginia is focused on landing a four-team regional.

"I think we're situated right," said Jason Bauman, U.Va.'s associate athletic director for facilities and operations. "I can't guarantee it, obviously, but I'm hopeful. Really hopeful."

In the bidding process, a school guarantees the NCAA a certain amount of money from a regional. The minimum is $35,000. Bauman declined to disclose U.Va.'s bids but said, "We're comfortably above the minimum. We didn't want finances to be the factor in their decision."

Even with the temporary seats that were added last month, Davenport Field's official capacity is a modest 2,430. LSU's Alex Box Stadium, by contrast, can hold about 8,000 fans.

Nonetheless, O'Connor said, "I think we're an attractive site because, obviously, we've earned it from our play, and I believe the NCAA is always looking for new geographical regions to host. And we've proven, with what we did against Florida State, that we can sell out our facilities."

Attendance for Virginia's three-game series against the Seminoles was 7,101. The Friday and Saturday night games attracted capacity crowds, and the Sunday matinee drew 2,241.

A regional at U.Va. would consist of two games June 4, three June 5 and one or two June 6. Virginia officials project sellouts for any games involving O'Connor's club. Single-game tickets or tournament books, a better value, would be available to fans.

O'Connor came to U.Va. from Notre Dame, which played host to a regional three times during his nine seasons as an assistant there. He appreciates how valuable that experience can be to a program.

"I think it would put us at another level, because only the elite programs in the country get to host," O'Connor said.

"This is a monumental thing for our baseball program, because if we do a good job of hosting it and our fans come out, then if we have another season like this, we're more likely to get one in the future."

If the Cavaliers beat Duke, they would play the Florida State-N.C. State winner Thursday at 8:30 p.m. Should the Cavaliers fall tomorrow, they would play the FSU-State loser in an elimination game Thursday at 1:30 p.m.