Virginia twins provide double trouble for foes
Mike Preston – Baltimore Sun
May 19, 2009

About 30 minutes after Johns Hopkins had absorbed one of the worst playoff losses in the school's history, Blue Jays coach Dave Pietramala made it a point to state the obvious, but it was a comment that was long overdue.

The Bratton brothers, Virginia's twin midfielders from New York, are two pretty good lacrosse players, he said.

"I wish they would have just stayed home," Pietramala said after they combined for seven goals in the No. 1 Cavaliers' 19-8 quarterfinal win over the Blue Jays on Sunday. "We recruited them. I watched them play basketball in high school. They are phenomenal athletes, but they are more than just athletes. They are quality lacrosse players."

How about that?

Very few times have we heard that about the Brattons, or any other African-Americans who play lacrosse. If they are successful, it's usually said to be because of their athleticism, not because of their skill.

In lacrosse, a player is determined to be a good lacrosse player if he can switch the stick from hand to hand with ease, or if he has a good understanding of the game. But like any other sport, good lacrosse players come in different heights, weights, colors and have different skill sets.

To say the Brattons, Rhamel and Shamel, are just good athletes would be an omission of their overall abilities because they are the total package. In fact, their game reached a new level this season, and they are just sophomores. The scary part is that they are only going to get bigger and better.

"I think it's the case of two young guys who are starting to get it," Virginia coach Dom Starsia said.

"For these guys, playing with players who are close to their level was probably an adjustment they had to make. Learning to play in a team setting is not something you can take for granted.

"Their development over this season and over their first two seasons here at Virginia has meant a lot, and we certainly expect them to continue to blossom."

Translation: When Rhamel and Shamel were at Huntington High in New York, they had to carry the team because they were clearly better than the other players on the roster. At Virginia, they've had to learn how to share the ball more and do other things because the Cavaliers have others on the rosters who are of equal talent.

But the Brattons are special. They are good shooters who can rifle shots with either hand. Both are solid on offense and defense, and they have game-changing speed, which makes them invaluable on clearing situations and fast breaks.

Their foot- and hand-speed sets them apart from other midfielders. They can change direction in a second - even at full speed - or just blow by defenders.

They can play anywhere on the offensive end of the field but are especially dangerous in the middle near the top of the restraining box because it forces a defense to cover the entire field. If you don't slide, the Brattons can burn you for goals.

Shamel has 30 goals and Rhamel nine, even though Rhamel missed extensive playing time this season with a back injury.

The Brattons have combined for 15 assists, so they can hurt you even if you do slide. They are multidimensional players.

"The Brattons were a handful, and we did not have an answer," Pietramala said. "They command a lot of attention. It's pick your poison."

Shamel Bratton said: "A lot of time when we are out there and [Rhamel] has the ball in the midfield, I think we create a lot of tough matchups for the opposing teams. Him playing well takes a little pressure off me and allows me to play off-ball more so that I can pass and dodge a lot more. He gives this team another option. Anytime we're out there, it makes it a real tough time for opposing defenses."

Virginia will play Cornell in the semifinals Saturday. If you want to see a team of athletes, check out Cornell. The Big Red will outrun and out-hustle most teams. The squad likes to play physically, but Cornell also has a lot of one-dimensional athletes at midfield.

One of Cornell's priorities will be to slow the Brattons, who are more athletic, and more importantly, better all-around lacrosse players. It's about time they finally got the recognition.









Top-seeded Virginia awaits Cornell in NCAA tourney
Defense stifles Princeton; top-ranked Virginia next
By Brian Delaney
bdelaney@gannett.com

HEMPSTEAD - After dispatching Princeton on Saturday, Cornell and its lunch-pail crew had less than 24 hours to celebrate its second Final Four berth in three years before an ominous shadow arose Sunday afternoon to deflate spirits:

Top-seeded Virginia.

The Cavaliers (15-2) now stand between Cornell and Monday's NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse national championship game, thanks to the Cavaliers' 19-8 quarterfinal rout of eighth-seeded Johns Hopkins on Sunday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

"Wow," said Cornell coach Jeff Tambroni on Sunday, while driving back with his coaching staff after taking in the game live. "They looked very good, very impressive. They looked good in every facet of the game. ... it's a pretty imposing group of Division I athletes."

Second-seeded Syracuse (14-2) and third-seeded Duke (15-3) will open Saturday's semifinal doubleheader at noon, with Cornell-Virginia slated to follow approximately 30 minutes after. The winners meet at 1 p.m. Monday.

The weekend will be filled with local ties. Sunday's 3 p.m. Division II championship game pits Le Moyne, with former Ithaca High standout Brian Welch, against C.W. Post, while SUNY Cortland advanced to Sunday's Division III noon championship game with a 16-8 victory over Middlebury on Sunday. The Red Dragons will play Gettysburg for the title.

Cornell and Virginia have met already this season, a 14-10 Cavaliers win on March 7 in Charlottesville. Despite the loss, Tambroni said the familiarity should help with preparations.

The Cavaliers will find out quickly they're facing a much different Cornell team this time around.

Against Princeton, Cornell's embattled defensive unit pieced together a ferocious effort that belied two years of inconsistent play in a physically intense 6-4 victory over its Ivy League rival in front of 11,259 Saturday at Hofstra's Shuart Stadium.

It was a game tailored to Princeton's strength - defense. But the Tigers' highly regarded unit was upstaged by a Cornell defense intent on shedding its perceived label as an Achilles heel.

That mission was accomplished with an iron resolve.

"I think our defense gets a lot of criticism for what they've done this year, and it was nice to see them step up and compete and play the way they did to send us off into the Final Four," Tambroni said.

The quarterfinal win was Cornell's 11th all-time, and second in three years after a 19-year drought.

Cornell wasn't a popular preseason pick for the Final Four in February, due mainly to its inconsistent goaltending. Kyle Harer started the season in goal, but was replaced by Jake Myers in early April. Myers held on to the job despite getting pulled in favor of Harer in the regular season finale against Hobart.

But Saturday, everything clicked. Myers made five saves - including a stunning stick-on-stick stop of crease-dwelling Chris McBride to open the fourth quarter and uphold a 5-3 lead - and Princeton's offense managed to put just nine of its 28 shots on cage in the face of constant, withering pressure.

"I thought both defenses really made the quote-unquote stars of each team really have to work," Tambroni said. "I don't know if I've ever seen a game with so few shots on goal collectively from two teams with the offense that you put out there."

Said Princeton coach Bill Tierney: "I thought both defenses played extremely well."

Princeton's vaunted first midfield line, which accounted for nine goals and three assists in last week's first-round win over Massachusetts, managed just one goal Saturday. The Tigers failed to convert six of seven man-up opportunities, including four one-minute power plays.

For the second time this season, Cornell dominated Princeton in the ground ball category. On April 18, a 10-7 Cornell win, the Big Red owned a 29-12 advantage. In the rematch, the disparity was 39-19.

Princeton's defense allowed one goal total in the first halves of its last three games. Cornell got three in the first quarter.

Ryan Hurley opened the scoring 93 seconds in with a successful wrap-around dodge from behind the cage, and George Calvert made it 2-0 two minutes later with a 10-yard rip.

After Princeton cut the lead to 2-1, Cornell got a big goal with 11 seconds left in the quarter when freshman Rob Pannell hit a cutting Rocco Romero for a bang-bang score. Cornell extended its lead to 5-1 at halftime after goals by Jonathan Thomson and John Glynn.

"One of our problems with them in the first game as well was they got off to a quick start," Princeton senior defenseman Chris Peyser said. "That hurt us early on."

With its usual suspects kept largely under wraps, Cornell got two goals from its second midfield line of Calvert, Thomson and Christopher Ritchie. Pannell's three assists were accrued in similar fashion. Maintaining possession behind the cage, he found a teammate cutting to the net and slipped a perfect pass each time for what were essentially backdoor layups.

The third, his second hook-up with Romero, gave Cornell a 6-3 lead with 7:36 remaining. Mark Kovler scored to make it 6-4 with 1:32 left, but Glynn won the ensuing faceoff and Cornell played keep-away to seal it.

Glynn won nine of 14 faceoffs, including seven of nine over the last three quarters. But with turnover counts high, both teams had ample possessions to snap their respective scoring droughts.

"I thought both teams knocked the ball to the ground a lot more today then we've seen in a long time," Tierney said. "You look at a 6-4 game with 6-5 saves, there's a lot of missed shots and a lot of pipes out there, both ways."

Cornell All-American midfielder Max Seibald saw his streak of 48 straight games with a point come to an end. He had no problem doling out credit aplenty to his teammates.

"We know our defense is going to be there and be consistent and make great plays throughout the entire game," he said. "And they were definitely there for us the entire game."









U.Va. notebook
By Staff Reports
Published: May 19, 2009

Prime time for Cavs three straight nights
The eight-team ACC baseball tournament starts tomorrow in Durham, N.C., and U.Va. is scheduled to play at 8 p.m. three days in a row.

No. 6 seed Virginia is in Division B, along with No. 2 seed North Carolina, No. 3 seed Clemson and No. 7 seed Duke. U.Va. will meet Clemson on Thursday, UNC on Friday and Duke on Saturday.

The Division A winner will meet the Division B winner for the ACC title Sunday at 1 p.m.

U.Va. and Clemson haven't met since April 2007. The large majority of Virginia coach Brian O'Connor's players never have faced the Tigers.

Starsia's milestone came on big stage
For Dom Starsia, victory No. 300 of his illustrious coaching career came Sunday on a grand stage. In an NCAA men's lacrosse quarterfinal, Virginia pummeled Johns Hopkins 19-8 in Annapolis, Md.

This is Starsia's 17th season at U.Va., where he's compiled a 199-64 record and won three NCAA titles. At Brown, his alma mater, he went 101-46 in 10 seasons.

Starsia, 57, was inducted into the Lacrosse Hall of Fame last year. He's tied with former UMass coach Dick Garber for third in career coaching victories.

The NCAA semifinals are Saturday at Foxborough, Mass. Top-seeded Virginia (15-2) faces No. 5 seed Cornell (12-3) at 2:30 p.m. Duke and defending NCAA champion Syracuse meet at noon.

Billings now 10th in points
Senior attackman Garrett Billings had four goals and three assists against Hopkins to move into 10th place on U.Va.'s career points list. Billings now has 204 points. Classmate Danny Glading, also an attackman, is sixth, with 220.

In career goals, Billings ranks sixth all-time at Virginia, with 124. Fifth is former star Ben Rubeor, with 136. Glading scored two goals against Hopkins to move into seventh place on the Cavaliers' career list, with 117.

Eventful first year for Vigilante
Jason Vigilante, whose title is director of track and field and cross country, has had a memorable first year at U.Va.

In the fall, the men's and women's cross country teams placed 14th and 26th, respectively, at the NCAA championships. The men's team won the ACC title.

This spring, Vigilante was named ACC men's coach of the year in outdoor track after guiding U.Va. to a share of its first conference title.

Vigilante, who was a star distance runner at N.C. State, came to U.Va. from Texas, where he was head men's coach in cross country and an assistant in track and field.

"He's had a huge impact," said Adams Abdulrazaaq, a Highland Springs High graduate who won the 110-meter hurdles at the ACC meet last month.

"He made a promise at the beginning of the season. He said, 'You can be ACC champions.' He said that to everybody. He said we could do it, and we proved that we could. He's really strict, because he has a set mindframe on what he wants done and what he expects and what he knows we can do. . . . But he brings a positive attitude and he makes us feel positive, makes us feel good, lets us know we can accomplish things if we put our minds to it. And we've done that."

- Jeff White







More from Tony Bennett’s latest hire
Jeff White
May 18, 2009

When I interviewed Mike Curtis last week, he said a lot of interesting things that, because of space restraints, didn’t make the subsequent article I wrote on his decision to leave the University of Michigan to become strength-and-conditioning coach for men’s basketball at U.Va., from which he has two degrees.

Curtis, whom I covered when he played at Manchester High School, is as engaging as they come. Here are some other excerpts from the interview:

*On his decision to leave Michigan to return to Virginia:

“It happened rather quickly. I would say it was about two weeks in the making. The whole transition, the whole courtship and that was all very, very brief. But it was home for me, so it didn’t need to be too long anyway.”

*On which party initiated contact:

“One day, I was actually in Chicago doing some continuing education, and [U.Va. executive associate AD] Jon Oliver gave me a call and asked if I’d come visit and see if that was something I’d be interested in doing, coming in and help Tony [Bennett] and the university kind of get basketball back to where it needs to be. And I was on the plane the next day visiting with Tony and Jason [Williford] and the staff.”

*On being re-united with former U.Va. teammate Jason Williford (who’s now one of Bennett’s assistants):

“In terms of making the decision, he made it very, very easy for me. I always looked up to Jason. Even back in our high school days, he was one of those players that just does all the right things. Plays hard. He’s not too flashy. He’s just a meat-and-potatoes guy who gets it done.”

*On his first impression of Bennett:

“I had heard of Tony, I’d heard about this dynamic young coach who was doing special things at Washington State, but I’d never had the opportunity to meet him. I actually had the opportunity to meet his father this past year. His father came up to a clinic at the University of Michigan that both of us spoke at. That was my first introduction to Dick Bennett. Tony is his father’s son. He’s very much like Dick in terms of his personality, his demeanor, and that was something I was attracted to once I had the opportunity to come in and talk to him.”

*On whether he tried to return to his alma mater in 2005 after Dave Leitao took over as coach:

“No, I didn’t. I knew that things were changing [at U.Va.], but I was happy with the Grizzlies, I was working for Jerry West, and at that point we were enjoying some playoff runs and some other things. And I was absolutely delighted to hear that a buddy of mine, in Shaun Brown, was the person who was able to get that job.”

*At Michigan, Curtis oversaw strength and conditioning for virtually every sport except football and hockey. On how his responsibilities will change at U.Va., where his entire focus will be men’s basketball:

“That’s one of the things that I’m looking forward to, getting back to Virginia and having the opportunity to focus in on a smaller group where I don’t have to worry about the administrative things. I can continue to create different things, because for me, part of my ability to come up with new training protocols and things of that nature is to have the ability to do those things myself. I really didn’t have that, with all the administrative duties I had at Michigan. So I’m looking forward to kind of getting back to sort of an NBA-type environment where I’ll have a smaller group of individuals to kind of focus on.”

*On John Paul Jones Arena, which replaced University Hall, in which Curtis played, as the home of U.Va basketball:

“Absolutely phenomenal … I hadn’t had the opportunity to really get back and see the facilities at all. Then for me to get back and wake up in the morning and go to JPJ and just see what they’ve been able to do at Virginia is just remarkable. I’m extremely proud of what Coach Littlepage has done. It’s amazing.”

*On why he left the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, for whom he was head strength-and-conditioning coach, for Michigan:

“That was my choice, because [former U.Va. star and then-Grizzlies coach Marc] Iavaroni was still there, and I had a contract extension on the table. But for me, I’d spent the six years in the NBA, and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to work with elite athletes, but I needed another challenge, and that’s something that’s really been part of me as a professional, in that I love to be stimulated. So the opportunity to come and go into a different environment, a different training setting, collegiately, was something that I was kind of excited about. And that’s why I took the Michigan job. I decided to leave to kind of go through that process of having to study other sports and do a little bit more administrative stuff and manage people. It was a great experience for me this year to be able to do that and kind of get my mind flowing again.”

*On the contribution he hopes to make to U.Va. hoops:

“I think that I can have a tremendous effect. Part of what I’ve tried to do with the teams that I’ve worked with is, basically, essentially, get them to be able to do the things that the coaches need them to do. It’s not necessarily just coming in and doing a bunch of grunt work and getting weight-room strong. A majority of what we will do is focus on movement and the ability to do basketball things … Strength training is just one aspect of what we do. So I think sometimes, not just basketball strength coaches, but all strength coaches, kind of get pigeonholed with that terminology of just strength and conditioning. But we do so many things that elicit better performance and enhancement of skills that I think a lot of people don’t understand.”

*On whether it was difficult to leave Michigan after one year:

“For me, I was happy at Michigan, and my intentions were to stay there and try to finish what I had started. At no time did I think that Virginia was going to actually think that I was going to be the person that they wanted to bring in, but when my name came up and they gave me a call ... At the end of the day, it’s home.“