Heartbroken Hoos Look Forward With Optimism

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — It wasn’t a topic that members of the University of Virginia men’s lacrosse team discussed regularly. They focused instead on making each day a productive one and “enjoying the journey,” head coach Lars Tiffany said. There was no question, however, about the Cavaliers’ goal this year.

They wanted to end the season as one of the teams playing at Scott Stadium, the site of Championship Weekend in this year’s NCAA tournament. That won’t happen. In a first-round game Sunday night at Klöckner Stadium, No. 5 seed UVA lost 14-10 to Georgetown.

If the Wahoos are inside Scott Stadium on Memorial Day Weekend, it will be as spectators, not participants.

“That’s a tough one,” close defenseman John Schroter said Sunday night. “Of course it was on everyone's mind since August. But we took one day at a time, one practice at a time, one game at a time, not looking too far ahead.”

Early last week, Tiffany called the Hoos’ season a “a hair-raising, death-defying roller coaster journey.” That description still seems apt.

Along the way, there were resounding victories in Tiffany’s 10^th season at Virginia. The Cavaliers defeated Duke in the regular season for the first time since 2004, and they knocked off top-ranked Notre Dame twice. UVA followed its second win over the Fighting Irish by thrashing North Carolina 16-6 in the ACC championship game in Charlotte, N.C.

“When we're playing at our best, it's unbelievable,” said Schroter, one of four UVA players named to the All-ACC team, along with midfielder Ryan Colsey and the Millon brothers, attackmen McCabe and Brendan.

Too often, though, Virginia wasn’t playing at its best. One-goal defeats to Johns Hopkins and Maryland easily could have gone the other way, but there also were one-sided losses to Richmond, Towson and, in the season finale, to Georgetown.

Tiffany opened his postgame media availability Sunday night by apologizing to UVA fans for his team’s sloppy play against Georgetown (11-4), which advances to meet Duke (10-4) in the NCAA quarterfinals.

“The ups and downs of this season will give you an ulcer, a headache or whatever,” Tiffany said. “We can play some great lacrosse at times. And, unfortunately, today was one of those days we don't put our best foot forward.”

The Cavaliers (10-7) turned the ball over 21 times against the Hoyas (11-4). Georgetown had 22 turnovers.

“It was a wet night,” Tiffany said. “It wasn't pouring, but the ball was slick. The sticks were slick. It got a little slippery out here. So you kind of expected more turnovers than normal.”

McCabe Millon, a junior, finished with one goal and two assists Sunday night, as did Brendan Millon, the ACC Freshman of the Year. Colsey and attackman Truitt Sunderland scored two goals apiece, and midfielder Ryan Duenkel added two assists. But a team that scored 15 goals or more eight times this season struggled against the Hoyas’ Anderson Moore, who finished with 15 saves.

“Their goalie kept stoning us,” Tiffany said. “Anderson Moore really stepped up when they needed him today.”

With 8:18 left in the second quarter, Duenkel fed Colsey for a goal that put UVA up 7-5, much to the delight of the home fans in the crowd of 4,137. But the Cavaliers didn’t score again until the 3:11 mark of the third quarter, when midfielder Joey Terenzi assisted Sunderland on a goal that ended Georgetown’s 5-0 run.

The Hoyas dominated the fourth quarter, unceremoniously ending the Hoos’ season. The win was Georgetown’s first-ever over Virginia.

“I'm just so grateful for all the people who stuck through it with us when we weren't very good in the early part of the season and supported us through the ACC play,” Tiffany said. “This is certainly disappointing. This isn't the level that Virginia lacrosse is supposed to be at.”

The Cavaliers, who have won two NCAA titles under Tiffany, were coming off a season in which they missed not only the NCAAs but the ACC tournament. “That’s unacceptable” for such a storied program, Tiffany said, and the Hoos entered 2026 determined to avoid a repeat of that regrettable season. But after losing in triple overtime to Maryland on March 14, they were 3-4 and “sort of trending that way again,” Tiffany said.

Instead of collapsing, however, Virginia found its footing and won five of its final seven regular-season games. Then came the ACC tournament in Charlotte, where UVA routed two high-caliber opponents. (Notre Dame and UNC are seeded Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, in the NCAA tournament.)

“For the men in that locker room to stick together, to follow the messaging, to just keep trusting the coaches, and for the fans to keep trusting us, I'm incredibly grateful,” Tiffany said.

When he met with his players in the locker room after the game Sunday night, Tiffany said, he told them that last year’s team “couldn't have done what we did this year. And then next year's team is going to build on the foundation of what we did this year.

"Going 4-2 in the ACC play, winning an ACC tournament, that's a really big deal. We've got to defend our turf better next year. We lost too many games [at Klöckner]. But we took a big step, and now we’ll look to launch from here.”

The 2025 season was a trying one for everyone associated with the program. “This year,” Schroter said, “words can't even describe how close this team is ... Everyone’s given their all so much, and it's really heartbreaking for us to go out like this. Georgetown's a great team, and we just didn't have our best game today.

“We struggled this year a little bit with consistency, especially earlier on. And we kind of had a flame starting to roar back in the ACCs. We flickered tonight, and that's not acceptable to me. It's been up and down.”

UVA is losing a handful of players, among them Sunderland, who finished with a team-high 51 goals, goalie Jake Marek, midfielders Will Inderlied and Mack Till, and defenseman Aidan Murnane. Marek and Murnane joined the program last summer after transferring to Virginia from Air Force and Colgate, respectively.

“I love this team,” Tiffany said. “It was really hard in there saying good-bye to some guys who won’t play again.”

Tiffany said he told his departing players after the Georgetown game that “they’ve laid the foundation for us to take that next step.”

UVA figures to start next season in a good place. Cavaliers with eligibility remaining include Schroter, Colsey, Terenzi, McCabe Millon, Duenkel, Brendan Millon, close defensemen Michael Meredith and Tommy Snyder, midfielders Chase Band, Owen Crann, Brayden Lahey and Sean Browne, long-stick midfielder Robby Hopper, faceoff specialist Griff Meyer and Andrew Greenspan, and short-stick defensive middies Hudson Hausmann, Wills Burt and Lindan Verville.

That collective experience will “help us get off to, hopefully, a better start,” Tiffany said. “We didn't get off to a great start this year. But if you think about all that's coming back and the incoming recruiting class we have, it's really, really exciting. And we'll see. We don't need to do too much in [the transfer] portal.”

In a program that has won seven NCAA titles, any season that doesn’t end with a championship is something a disappointment, and tears fell among UVA players late Sunday. Even so, the Cavaliers look forward with optimism.

“What a great foundation we've laid,” Schroter said. “This whole year has been not a failure, by any means. It's a huge success in so many ways. Of course, it wasn't the outcome we wanted. But I think we built a really good base and foundation ... So I'm so excited to come back and keep going.”

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