Georgetown Believes, Virginia Breaks and Hoyas Advance to NCAA Quarterfinals

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Georgetown midfielder Jack Ransom gladly recounted coach Kevin Warne’s succinct pregame message as the Hoyas stared down an ACC opponent on the road in the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row: “We’re unbeatable.”

The Hoyas sure looked like it for the final three quarters Sunday night.

Unseeded Georgetown discombobulated fifth-seeded Virginia 14-10 before 4,137 at Klöckner Stadium, denying the impatient Cavaliers unsettled opportunities on the way to a triumph that echoed last year’s 16-12 victory at Duke to open the tournament.

“Part of being a head coach is belief, and you work to give kids belief,” Warne said. “In order to give kids belief, they turn around and they do the work during practice. You don’t know until you get to the game, but why go into game like, ‘I don’t know?’ Let’s go. We have nothing to lose. Nobody thought we were going to win this game, and that was the best thing for us.”

Anderson Moore made 15 saves and Ty Banks helped limit Virginia’s McCabe Millon to a goal and two assists on six shots as the Hoyas (11-4) advanced to a quarterfinal meeting with Duke (10-4) on Sunday in Newark, Del.

It is the first time two unseeded teams have met in a quarterfinal since Delaware and UMBC met in 2007 and just the second time in tournament history.

Rory Connor, Jack Schubert and Ransom each scored three times for Georgetown, which became the first team since 2016-17 Towson to win first-round road games in back-to-back years. The Hoyas advanced to the quarterfinals for the fifth time in six years.

“They’re an ACC team and they’re all athletic as hell, and I think we just grit our teeth harder today and we had a good day,” said Ransom, whose team has won eight in a row.

Ryan Colsey and Truitt Sunderland both scored twice for the Cavaliers (10-7), who played with zest on the way to last week’s ACC tournament title in Charlotte, N.C., but seemed off at both ends of the field Sunday.

Defensively, Virginia wasn’t as sharp, as Georgetown shot a sizzling 38.9 percent. But it was an almost endless string of bad passes and poor decisions in the second half that helped do in the Cavaliers.

Virginia had 13 of its season-high-tying 21 turnovers in the second half as the game devolved into a bit of helter-skelter. (Georgetown did its part to add to the chaos, giving it away 15 times after the break and finishing with 22.)

“We made some big mistakes in the fourth quarter going offsides when the ball’s cleared --- just made some young-guy mistakes,” Virginia coach Lars Tiffany said. “They’re pretty good in transition, too, and it’s the style of play we love. There was a concerted effort to take it away, and if they didn’t, Anderson Moore was there to take it away.”

Moore had 13 saves by the end of the third quarter, though Virginia scored the final two goals of that period to get within 10-9. But Ransom scored midway through the period to restore a multi-goal lead, and when Liam Connor scored off a feed from his brother Rory with 4:09 left, a Hoyas victory felt imminent.

Whatever doubt of that was gone when Rory Connor and Charlie McGuinn deposited empty-net scores within the next 70 seconds.

Meanwhile, Virginia had twice as many turnovers (six) as shots on goal (three) in the fourth quarter, never making a substantial push.

“We knew there weren’t going to be as many settled opportunities, six-on-six, so we knew once we had them settled, we were kind of in our wheelhouse,” Banks said. “We wanted to take away as much transition as possible, slow them down and make them play six-on-six.”

It was a conclusion incongruent to the way the Cavaliers had played for much of the last month and a half. Virginia was 3-4 in mid-March, but beat Notre Dame (twice), Duke and North Carolina as part of taking seven of nine heading into the postseason.

That surge helped Virginia move past the bitterness of last year’s forgettable 6-8 run, a context Tiffany didn’t want to forget even as the Cavaliers’ hopes of playing an on-campus home game on Memorial Day weekend — something no team since 1997 Maryland has done — were extinguished.

“It’s a really disappointing end of the season, obviously,” Tiffany said. “Having said that, after last year where we have a losing record, which is blasphemy for the tradition, history and legacy that I stand in front of you talking and representing Virginia lacrosse. That’s unacceptable. We were kind of trending that way again. For the men in that locker room to stick together, follow the messaging, just keep trusting the coaches, the fans to keep trusting us, I’m incredibly grateful.”

Virginia started in impressive fashion, getting goals from Lindan Verville and Ryan Colsey in the first three minutes. But Georgetown promptly stiffened and eventually took a 3-2 edge with 5:38 left in the opening quarter.

It might not have seemed like much, but the Hoyas had never led in four previous NCAA tournament meetings with the Cavaliers, all quarterfinal losses.

“They’re going to get theirs. That’s who they are and what makes them so lethal. When the ball hits the deck in between the boxes, they can go, they’re skilled, they’re athletic, they’re fast,” Warne said. “Early on, some of our offensive guys were like, ‘Oh boy.’ You can try to practice and replicate that, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But you want to limit it as much as you can and force them to play six-on-six.”

Soon enough, Georgetown was on its own run. After trailing by as many as three, the Hoyas got goals coming out of timeouts from Schubert and Jake Bickel in the final 21 seconds of the half to claim an 8-7 advantage.

A year earlier, the Hoyas scored a go-ahead goal with 4 seconds left in the first half against Duke … and promptly gave up a goal at the buzzer off the faceoff. But it was still similar to Sunday, a tight game against an ACC program with a fistful of championship rings to their name.

“Going into halftime, it’s like, ‘We’ve been here before,’” Moore said. “This is kind of the same spot we were in last year. Kids were saying that in the locker room and we just knew and had belief.”

Just like Warne hoped they would