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March 2, 2003
Sophomore John Christmas scored the game-winning goal with 22 seconds left in the fourth quarter to propel Virginia to a 16 to 15 win over top-ranked Syracuse Saturday.
“Solomon Bliss was baiting for my right to left move the whole time,” Christmas said. “I gave him a right-to-right fake and he went for it and I took a shot and luckily it went it.”
“Coach Van Arsdale does a great job with our offense,” head coach Dom Starsia said. “It’s a little scheme we have been practicing for a couple of weeks. When we called a timeout we talked about it and we walked through it yesterday [Friday] as a matter of fact in practice. So we were prepared for that and John Christmas was able to make the play at the end. I was really glad for John that he had a big game coming up here like this. A lot of people were talking about it and the fact that he stepped up on the big stage and had a big moment for us – it was very important for us to start off the season like this. “
“Johnny just split them left-to-right, got out there from ten yards on the run and fired a bounce shot that just went over the top of his [Syracuse goalie Jay Pfeifer’s] stick,” senior midfielder A.J. Shannon said. “It was a beautiful shot. I was exhausted. I think everybody on the field on offense was exhausted out there and once we saw Johnny make that split and hit that shot, it was like the biggest relief ever.”
There was cause for relief because Virginia had lost four consecutive games by a combined 10 goals since UVa defeated the Orangemen to claim the 1999 national championship. In the national semifinals last season, the Cavaliers lost a heartbreaking 12-11 double overtime decision to Syracuse.
“We’ve been talking about this since the end of last season,” Starsia said. “I really felt like the game in the semifinal last year that we lost was a little bit different effort from our group. I thought we did everything in our power in that game to win that game and we didn’t win. And we came away thinking that we were going to sort of turn the corner a little bit. We’ve been very successful over the years, but we think we have the ability to be a dominant program. Coming up here and winning up here in this environment is an important first step because you can talk about it all you want with the players, but you have to do it and this gives us a real boost of confidence.”
“It’s sort of like getting over the hump there with them,” Shannon said. “0-4 the senior class has been with them. It was us that wanted it a lot, but everybody else on the team wanted it a lot. They’ve always won the close games and you start to doubt yourself after awhile. We just came out there and we finally won a close game against them. It’s a big lift for the team, but we have to get focused for Princeton next week.”
Much of the talk of the preseason centered around how UVa would overcome the departure of three-time All-American Conor Gill on offense. The Cavaliers are not replacing Gill with one player, but instead spreading the scoring responsibilities among a host of talented attackmen and middies. In Saturday’s win, Christmas, Joe Yevoli, and Matt Ward combined to score 11 goals from the attack positions and midfielder A.J. Shannon added four. Such balance creates quite a dilemma when an opposing defense is preparing for the ‘Hoos offense.
“When we have our starting midfield and our starting attack out there it’s kind of hard to decide who you are going to put the pole on,” Christmas said. “Whoever doesn’t have the pole can go to the cage. And it’s kind of the opposite, too. Whoever has the pole can still go to the cage. We just need to keep working hard on defense and being tough and not dwelling too much on a big win like this.”
Virginia returns to action this Saturday when it travels to perennial power Princeton. Be sure to return to virginiasports.com throughout the season for feature articles and video highlights of Cavalier lacrosse.