Hoos Happy to be Home for Sweet Sixteen

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As No. 11 seed Virginia battled West Virginia in the NCAA men’s soccer tournament Sunday night at Klöckner Stadium, another second-round game was being played some 250 miles away in Philadelphia.

When the final second ticked off the clock in his team’s 2-1 win, UVA head coach George Gelnovatch had no idea what was unfolding in Philly, but he received an update from deputy athletic director Steve Pritzker moments later. Gelnovatch learned that UMass had upset No. 6 seed Penn 1-0, and a good day got even better for the Wahoos.

Instead of heading north next week to play Penn, Virginia will be at home for the Sweet Sixteen.

“We’re pretty happy being able to be here,” center back Nick Dang said. “It’s a little warmer, I think, than Pennsylvania too, and we don’t have to travel, which is really nice. We stay home for Thanksgiving.”

UVA (11-6-3) will host UMass (12-3-5) at 5 p.m. Saturday at Klöckner. A win would send the Hoos to the NCAA quarterfinals for the first time since 2019, where they advanced to the College Cup for the 13^th time.

The Cavaliers have won seven NCAA championships in this sport, but rarely in their storied history have they faced a second-round opponent as formidable as West Virginia (13-2-7). The Mountaineers swept the Sun Belt Conference’s regular-season and tournament titles this fall and returned a strong core from the team that reached the College Cup in 2023.

The top 16 seeds in the 48-team NCAA tournament received first-round byes, and many, including Virginia’s coaching staff, were surprised that the selection committee didn’t include WVU in that group. The unseeded Mountaineers knocked off North Florida 2-1 in the first round and came to Charlottesville riding a nine-match unbeaten streak.

“That is a great playoff win against a very good West Virginia team,” Gelnovatch said. “When the final RPI came out at the end of the regular season, after all the tournaments were played this time last week, they were 16 in the RPI. So we just played one of the better teams in the tournament in our first game and did a great job of handling it and did a great job handling giving up an early goal too.”

The Mountaineers scored off a corner kick in the third minute Sunday night. About three minutes later, the Cavaliers tied the game. Sophomore forward AJ Smith headed a long ball from Dang to junior midfielder Albin Gashi, who lost his balance—and nearly lost possession—when challenged by goalkeeper Marc Bonnaire but managed to nudge the ball into the open goal.

“His touch got away from him, but he stayed with it,” Gelnovatch said.

“Somehow I got the ball in, and I’m happy we scored,” Gashi said. “It’s important to get a goal directly after their goal.”

One of the Cavaliers’ captains, along with senior wingback Paul Wiese and junior midfielder Umberto Pelà, Gashi has been a fixture in the lineup all season. For Smith, a 6-foot-4, 189-pound sophomore, it was only his seventh game as a Cavalier. A junior-college transfer who joined the program this year, Smith has been slowed by injuries, but his performance Sunday night highlighted his immense talent.

“He’s just a presence up there,” Gashi said. “You know if you’re in trouble, you can launch a ball up to him and he can take on two defenders and just hold up the ball, let us come forward, and that adds a lot.”

Smith is “the fastest, most athletic guy that we have on the team,” Gelnovatch said. “I don’t think you’ve seen half of what he’s capable of doing when he gets fit.”

In the 33^rd minute, Smith tapped in a cross from sophomore midfielder Brendan Lambe to make it 2-1, and that goal proved to be the game-winner. With about 10 minutes remaining in the match, Kome Ubogu replaced Smith, who left to a warm ovation from the home fans.

“It’s really nice to see him get back into form,” Dang said of Smith. “Every time we’re under pressure, it’s an easy choice. If I’m going to play it long, just aim for his head, and nine out of ten times he’s going to win the ball.”

Spurred on their boisterous cheering section at Klöckner, the Mountaineers did not go quietly after falling behind. They finished with 16 shots, to only five for their hosts, but Virginia defended resolutely. Of senior goalkeeper Joey Batrouni’s four saves, three came in the second half.

“He was nice and steady in there,” Gelnovatch said, “and calmed us down and a good presence.”

Defending against a talented team that’s desperate to extend its season is challenging, said Dang, a second-team All-ACC selection. “[The Mountaineers] have a lot of threats up top, so the balls that they were serving in, it’s very difficult to deal with. It takes a toll on you, but at some point you kind of get used to it.”

Dang is a transfer from Lipscomb, where he was 0-2 in NCAA tournament games. He acknowledged that he found himself glancing at the scoreboard clock repeatedly in the second half Sunday night, probably more than he should have.

“I feel like one time I looked back and it was like 4.30 on the clock,” Dang said, smiling. “Then I looked back again, it felt like 10 minutes later, and it was like four minutes left on the clock. And I was like, ‘What are we doing here?’ But those, you just have to grind it out.”

In the last 15 minutes of a one-goal game, Gelnovatch said, “it’s natural for one team to start taking more chances and one team to get a little bit more cautious … and usually now balls are coming into the box and you have to be disciplined. The goalkeeper’s got to be sharp, all your markers have got to be touch tight, and down the stretch everybody did a really good job of that.”

Junior defender Grant Howard’s return to the backline proved crucial. Injuries have hindered Howard, a transfer from Virginia Tech, and he missed UVA’s three games in the ACC tournament. He played the whole 90 minutes Sunday night.

“I was tempted to play Grant in the ACC tournament, but I didn’t,” Gelnovatch said. “It probably hurt us, but it kept him healthy tonight and got us ready for the playoffs. So he makes a big difference. You can see that on the field. And now AJ too. So those two haven’t been on the field together for, I don’t know, two months, six weeks, something like that. And now we have them back.”

The win over WVU marked the latest chapter in a remarkable turnaround by UVA. After losing Oct. 1 to UNC Greensboro at Klöckner, the Hoos were 2-4-3, and their postseason prospects looked bleak. But they never splintered.

A lot of factors have contributed to the Cavaliers’ resurgence, Gashi said. “Just getting the team chemistry together, everybody on the same page, just working hard together. I think we have 10 different players that have scored a game-winning goal. So we’ve been a good team. We don’t have any real superstars. I’ll say we have 42 superstars and we’ve just been together as a team.”

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