Kevin Cassese Introduced as Virginia Head Coach After 'Wild' Past Week

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When college lacrosse’s biggest stage arrived on Virginia’s campus last weekend, it seemed there were just as many questions about the host institution’s program than the four that congregated at Scott Stadium.

Kevin Cassese stood on the Scott Stadium field alongside his son Drew, an eighth-grader at nearby St. Anne’s-Belfield, eagerly watching like any dad spending the holiday weekend with his kid — only he was one who happened to be up for one of the sport’s biggest head coaching jobs.

Cassese received a promotion Tuesday, eight days after the school announced Lars Tiffany’s 10-year tenure was over. And Wednesday, the former Lehigh coach marveled at the swing that has vaulted him into the Cavaliers’ top job after three years as the school’s offensive coordinator.

“It really has been wild from last Monday, hearing the announcement and trying to navigate the waters of understanding what took place and how my role was going to evolve and what that would look like,” Cassese said at a press conference at John Paul Jones Arena. “I’ll be honest and say there were times where I didn’t know if I was going to have a job.”

The fascinating element Wednesday were multiple swirling undercurrents that led to an unexpected coaching change. Tiffany won two national championships and reached four final fours with the Cavaliers. Despite a topsy-turvy season, Virginia had just won the ACC tournament earlier in the month before falling in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Georgetown.

Then there are the financial realities of modern college sports, with what amounts to a pay-for-play element leading to even greater resources funneled toward football and basketball. For other programs, it means there’s more effort required to generate the money needed to compete. And that’s not just a Virginia issue, though it surely applies to the Cavaliers.

“Fundraising now, in this new landscape, is everyone’s responsibility,” Virginia athletic director Carla Williams said. “Remember when compliance was everyone’s responsibility? And it still is. Fundraising is everyone’s responsibility now. Not just fundraising in a typical way, but sourcing business opportunities for NIL is really important as well.”

As Cassese pointed out, he does have some practice in that area. When he took over at Lehigh in the summer of 2007, the Mountain Hawks had never been to the NCAA tournament and had claimed the Patriot League just once. It was his task, as a 26-year-old head coach, to generate excitement and interest.

By 2012, Lehigh was in the NCAA tournament and playing host to Maryland in the first round, and it settled in as an annual conference contender while making additional NCAA trips in 2013 and 2021.

The ACC, of course, is on a different fiscal tier than the Patriot League. Cassese pointedly said support from Williams, the Virginia administration and program alums bled through the conversations during the interview process.

“Do I think we are in position to compete for championships with the resources we have? I do, 100 percent with conviction, I do,” Cassese said “Would it be helpful to continue to build on that? I also believe that to be true.”

That’s life in the world of the House v. NCAA settlement, which was finalized last year. For the purposes of men’s lacrosse, a limit of 12.6 scholarships divvied up however a program saw fit was replaced by a roster cap of 48 players with schools allowed to provide as many scholarships within that total.

That leaves a wide range of potential support for many high-profile men’s lacrosse programs, some of which don’t have to share money with an FBS football program on campus. Everyone is figuring out the new realities, but more is good is an understandable basic sentiment. (So, too, is all is better.)

“I think they need to evolve — quickly,” former Virginia coach Dom Starsia said. “Kevin and I talked about that a great deal. My question to him for talking to Carla was, ‘What’s the plan for scholarship support going forward?’ I don’t think Kevin walked away from these negotiations without a solid answer to that question. I don’t know what it is. He didn’t tell me what they told him, but all you want as a coach is, ‘Just give me a chance to compete with my peers, that’s all.’”

Cassese, just the fourth head coach at Virginia since 1978, began his coaching career with a one-year stint at Stony Brook under Tiffany. He moved on to Duke in the summer of 2005 and served as the Blue Devils’ interim coach after Mike Pressler’s firing in the wake of what proved to be unfounded rape accusations that caused the school to cancel the final half of the 2006 season.

After a year working for Pressler’s successor, John Danowski, Cassese took over at Lehigh and went 136-104 over 16 years. He accepted Tiffany’s offer to join as Virginia’s offensive coordinator in the summer of 2023, saying both at the time and Wednesday that the aim was to get back to the ACC and compete for titles.

“In contrast to a lot of opinions that simply don’t matter, I have deep respect for Lars and what he has meant to the sport of lacrosse, and specifically UVA lacrosse, and I’m grateful for everything he has done for me and all I learned alongside him,” Cassese said.

Cassese said one of his immediate duties is to serve as a stabilizer after a turbulent period for the program, and he clearly was the continuity choice after Tiffany’s exit for a program that reached the NCAA semifinals just two years ago.

He’s played a role in recruiting much of the roster and has also worked closely with an offense that could return six of its seven double-digit point scorers from this spring, a group that includes attackmen McCabe Millon (31 goals, 46 assists) and Brendan Millon (34 goals, 43 assists) and midfielders Ryan Duenkel (20 goals, 11 assists) and Chase Band (16 goals, five assists).

Ryan Colsey (36 goals, 10 assists) and Joey Terenzi (14 goals, 12 assists) both have a fifth year of eligibility available, while attackman Truitt Sunderland (team-high 51 goals) graduated.

“Kevin Cassese is the right person for our position today,” Williams said. “He’s earned it. He’s a great coach, not just at UVA and what he’s done in his short time here, but he’s a great coach, period. Then you add on his ability to connect with players, recruits, families, parents, staff, I think you saw how many staff members were here today, he just has that type of personality that makes people want to work with him, support him and help him find success.”

Cassese was a Tewaaraton Award finalist in 2002 and 2003 at Duke as an old-school midfielder, playing for the Blue Devils after their first final four trip under Pressler (1997) and before they advanced to the national title game in 2005 with a loaded sophomore and junior class.

In many ways, he was an on-field extension of Pressler, who he was set to work for this summer with the Premier Lacrosse League’s New York Atlas before having to relinquish those duties upon taking over at Virginia.

“He was the kind of guy that if all the sudden they were going to start getting Kevin Casseses in the recruiting, you could feel it was about to change,” Starsia said. “If his Virginia teams reflect his play, then the program is in good hands. He was a warrior. He did everything — faceoffs, offense, defense. He was a hardass, and we had our hands full with him.”

Cassese said he hopes to hire both an offensive and a defensive coordinator in the coming weeks, a contrast to how he largely ran the offense at Lehigh. It is a concession to how much off-field responsibilities await him.

His Mountain Hawk teams were imbued with his personality, physical and rugged and not particularly pleasant to deal with on the field. Cassese long touted four core values at Lehigh — passion, selflessness, discipline and toughness — and he cited them again Wednesday at the launch of his Virginia tenure.

“That’s how I aim to live my life every single day,” Cassese said. “That’s how I aim to do my job and lead men, and that’s what I’m going to ask them to bring every single day. That’s what I’m looking for, and I think that, with a whole lot more talent, is the way it’s going to be.”