Dang's Return Bolsters Hoos' Back Line

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In 2009, when the Virginia Cavaliers won the program’s sixth NCAA title in men’s soccer, they allowed only eight goals in 25 games.

In 2019, when they reached the College Cup final, the Cavaliers posted 15 shutouts and gave up 13 goals in 24 games. And so UVA’s defensive breakdowns last season were jarring. In two games alone—one-sided losses to ACC rivals Pittsburgh (4-1) and Wake Forest (5-1)—the Wahoos allowed more goals than they did in all of 2009.

“We typically don’t have one of those games,” head coach George Gelnovatch said. “We had two of them last year.”

That didn’t keep Virginia from earning the No. 11 seed in the NCAA tournament. Still, with the start of a new season at hand, Gelnovatch wants to see his team return to form on the defensive end of the field, and that’s been a major talking point during the preseason.

“And it’s not just the goalkeepers,” Gelnovatch said. “It’s that mentality as a team, a collective, to not give up shots and not give up goals.”

The return of center back Nick Dang figures to help the Hoos in their pursuit of that objective. In 2024, his first season at UVA, Dang was named to the All-ACC second team. In the MLS SuperDraft that followed the season, Real Salt Lake selected Dang with the 19^th pick of the second round (49^th overall), and he worked out for the team in Utah last winter.

He didn’t perform to his standards, though, and Dang decided to return to UVA for the 2025 season. He’d been playing through a sports hernia and a knee injury late last season, and “I couldn’t do it at [the MLS] level,” Dang said. “So I decided I’d just get [the sports hernia] fixed, come back, finish my degree and try again next winter.”

Dang said he views his tryout as a valuable experience. “Totally. It was instructive as far as knowing what they want out of me, just things I need to work on here and how to help us succeed as a team here.”

He took the spring semester off after having surgery to repair his sports hernia and did most of his rehab in his hometown of Brentwood, Tenn. Real Salt Lake retains his right for two years, so he’ll have other opportunities to reach MLS. For now, he’s focused on his final college season.

Dang spent three years at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., before transferring to UVA in 2024. He’d redshirted at Lipscomb in 2021, so Dang arrived at Virginia with two seasons of eligibility remaining, and he made an immediate impact. He played a team-high 1,775 minutes last season and scored six goals, including one game-winner. Dang was one of only three defenders in Division I to score at least six goals in 2024.

He’s hoping to score more this season. A bigger priority, though, is helping the Hoos keep opponents’ shots out of the back of the net.

“We let in way more than we wanted to last year,” Dang said. “I think that’s something that we can fix.”

Gelnovatch’s 30^th season as head coach at his alma mater begins Thursday night, when 17^th-ranked Virginia meets San Diego State at 8 o’clock in the second game of a Klöckner Stadium doubleheader. (The No. 17 UVA women host Xavier at 5:30 p.m.)

Dang won’t play in the opener. He strained his adductor early this month and is likely to miss the first three or four games of the season.

“I’m itching to get back,” said Dang, whom Top Drawer Soccer ranks No. 8 on its preseason list of the top 100 college players. “I don’t know what my timeline is yet, but I’m slowly building my way back in there.”

Also unavailable for the opener is wingback Reese Miller, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in UVA’s sixth game last fall and has yet to be cleared for full participation. Miller finished his abbreviated season with three goals and an assist, and he’ll be important piece for Virginia when he returns to the field.

Even without a full complement of players, the Cavaliers look to have plenty of weapons, and Gelnovatch believes three critical elements are in place for a special season.

First, he said, Virginia has “a core group of older guys that have played significant minutes in big games over the course of multiple years.” They include Dang, Miller, team captains Albin Gashi and Umberto Pelà, Brendan Lambe and Parker Sloan.

“Then I’ve got some special transfers,” Gelnovatch said, including goalkeeper Casper Mols (Kentucky), Marco Dos Santos (Boston College), Noah Hall (Pitt) and Jesus De Vicente (University of Illinois Chicago). Also experienced is center back Sebastian Pop, a 6-foot-4 graduate student who’d been playing in his native Norway.

“And then we’ve got a hungry group of first-years,” Gelnovatch said. Among them are Zachary Ehrenpreis and Nicholas Simmonds.

Moreover, the Hoos also return Triton Beauvois, who contributed two goals and two assists last season, and AJ Smith, whom New York City FC selected with the 18^th pick of the third round in last year’s MLS SuperDraft.

“We have a lot of potential,” Dang said, but he knows the Cavaliers will be judged on how they perform on the field, not how they look on paper.

“You gotta to have a good regular season,” Dang said. “You gotta have a good start to your season, you gotta have a good end to your season, and a good postseason, or else you’re gonna fall short like every other team does.”

In games played in October over the past three seasons, the Cavaliers have posted a 12-3-5 record. They’ve been slow, however, to start clicking.

In 2022, Virginia was 4-3 after seven games. The Hoos didn’t get off to a fast start in 2023 either, and their record after eight games was 4-3-1 after eight games.

In 2024, the Hoos were 2-4-3 after losing at home to UNCG, and the season seemed to be slipping away from them. They reversed their fortunes by winning eight of their next nine games, but Gelnovatch would prefer his team not put itself in such a precarious position this season. He also says it’s time for the Cavaliers, who captured the program’s seventh NCAA championship in 2014, to make another deep postseason run.

As the No. 4 seed, Virginia lost in the NCAA tournament’s round of 32 in 2022. Seeded No. 7, the Cavaliers fell in the round of 16 in ’23, and that’s where they excited the NCAAs last year too.

“What we need to do is break through that round-of-16 barrier,” Gelnovatch said. “We have that core group of six or seven guys who have played the minutes in those games, and they should know what it’s going to take to get through that. It’s time to stop knocking on the door and just kick it in.”

Dang, who lives with De Vicente and Pop, came to UVA partly because he wanted to experience such postseason success. An economics major, he’s on track to graduate in December, after which he hopes to start his professional career.

“It’s been good,” Dang said of his time at the University. “The academics are more rigorous, for sure. But definitely from a soccer standpoint, the training every day is very, very good, very high level, and the games we play in are against some of the best players in the country. So it’s really nice to have that here. If we could do a little more winning and make a little [deeper] postseason run, it would be perfect.”

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