Hoos Happy To Be In Familiar Surroundings

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As the selection show for the NCAA field hockey tournament approached Sunday night, University of Virginia head coach Ole Keusgen wasn’t convinced his team would be named one of the four regional hosts.

“I thought it was a 50/50 chance,” Keusgen recalled after practice Tuesday evening at Turf Field. “Obviously we knew we were in the mix, but we were last year too.”

In 2024, UVA was sent to the NCAA regional hosted by Northwestern in Evanston, Ill. After Northwestern and Princeton won the Big Ten and Ivy League tournaments, respectively, on Sunday afternoon, Keusgen worried that Virginia might get passed over for the second straight year. But when the selection show finally aired at 10 p.m., the Cavaliers received the news for which they were hoping.

For the first time since 2019, UVA will open the NCAA tournament at home. The No. 4 seed in the 18-team tournament, Virginia (16-2) hosts Miami-Ohio (15-4) at noon Friday at Turf Field. Northwestern (18-1) and Iowa (14-5) will follow around 2:30 p.m., with Friday’s winners to meet Sunday afternoon for a berth in the NCAA semifinals in Durham, N.C.

The Wahoos are coming off a trying stay at the ACC tournament in Louisville, Ky., and not having to pack up and travel again this weekend will benefit his team, Keusgen said.

A powerful virus swept through the hotel where the Hoos stayed in Louisville, and many of their players, as well as those on other teams, including California, were stricken. Keusgen got sick after the Cavaliers’ quarterfinal win over Stanford and missed their semifinal victory over Syracuse last Thursday.

About 24 hours after the semifinal ended, Virginia took on top-seeded North Carolina in the ACC final. Keusgen was back on the sideline for that game—“More or less,” he said with a smile Tuesday—but his players weren’t close to full strength.

“We all tried,” he said, “but at that point, the virus was in the team pretty much. So everyone was exhausted, fatigued. Physically, we were really not able to play a full game, not even talking about an ACC championship game. There was no chance that we could compete on a level that we usually do.”

In the regular season, UNC edged Virginia 1-0 at Turf Field. The rematch wasn’t nearly as competitive. The Tar Heels scored the game’s first three goals and won 4-1.

“We were not able to compete that day, physically, mentally, even just health-wise,” Keusgen said. “We had too many players just being fatigued, not necessarily super down like I personally was, but when you have that virus in you, you fight it, you’re exhausted, you’re tired, you have low energy. And then on top of that it’s three games in four days.”

The rest of the team left Louisville after the game last Friday and bused back to Charlottesville. Keusgen, worried that he might be contagious, stayed over that night and drove the eight hours home in a rental car Saturday.

The Cavaliers had Saturday off and then practiced briefly on Sunday and Monday. “So pretty much three days to fully physically reset and kind of recharge,” Keusgen said.

Had the Hoos been sent to Northwestern for the second straight year, they would have had to leave Charlottesville on Wednesday, Keusgen said, with much of the day spent en route to the Chicago area. Being able to host a regional “gives us at least one more additional day to recover from last week, which is great,” Keusgen said. “That means a lot just in terms of preparation, but then also for us as a team being able to play at home, where we’re usually a force. So that’s a huge advantage for us.”

This has been an exceptional season for UVA, whose roster includes four all-conference selections: goalkeeper Nilou Lempers, Suze Leemans, Mia Abello and Lauren Kenah. Lempers, Leemans and Abello were named to the All-ACC first team and Kenah to the second team. Leemans, Abello and Kenah are the team captains.

Abello leads Virginia with 18 points, and Leemans has 15. Emma Watchilla has totaled 12 points, and five other Cavaliers have at least eight points each.

Lempers, who also was honored as ACC Goalkeeper of the Year, has started 17 games this season, with eight shutouts.

“Nilou has been a backbone,” Keusgen said. “We defend usually well, but our opponent gets two, three, four good looks every game. She makes the easy saves that you have to have, but then she also makes at least one save that you don’t [always] make, the outstanding save, and as of late she just has been on the streak.”

The Cavaliers weren’t happy with their play in the ACC championship game, Keusgen said, and “we’re eager to prove that this was not our normal team, not our normal performance, that we showed throughout the year. So we’re ready to go.”

UVA’s first-round opponent, Miami, is “a very uncomfortable team to play,” Keusgen said. “They play a very unique style. No other team in Division 1 plays that way. It’s a kind of very Spanish influence, so they have different tactics.”

The RedHawks’ longtime head coach, Iñako Puzo, is from Venezuela. Six of his players are from Spain, and “obviously hockey is played a little different there,” Keusgen said, “so they bring their own little very unique challenges, particularly tactical.”

In each of the past two seasons, Virginia lost to the eventual champion in the NCAA tournament. In 2023, the Hoos fell 2-0 to North Carolina in the NCAA semifinals, and they lost in overtime last year to Northwestern in the NCAA quarterfinals.

This is Keusgen’s second full year as head coach—he was promoted from associate head coach before the 2023 postseason—and he wasn’t sure what to expect from a team that had lost numerous key players from 2024. Virginia came into the season with 11 newcomers: nine freshmen and two transfers.

“With the right leadership from our captains and good teammates it can always fuse into this,” Keusgen said. “That we were able to create this is obviously fantastic. The young players, they carry a lot of load as I’ve said throughout the entire year, but we put things like into place that would help them to be confident from day one, and I think that just paid off hugely.”

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