UNC Battles Virginia Saturday on ESPN

April 7, 2011 | Men's Lacrosse

By: UNC Athletic Communications

April 7, 2011

UNC TRAVELS TO CHARLOTTESVILLE SATURDAY: North Carolina will be headed to Charlottesville, Va. on Saturday as the Tar Heels meet Virginia in an Atlantic Coast Conference matchup at 12 p.m. at Klockner Stadium. The game will be nationally televised on ESPN with Eamon McAnaney doing the play by play and Quint Kessenich serving as the color analyst. It will be UNC's first appearance on ESPN since the Tar Heels played in the 1993 NCAA championship game against Syracuse at College Park, Md. The No. 5/8-ranked Tar Heels (7-3, ACC 1-1) will look to bounce back from a heartbreaking 10-9 loss against Johns Hopkins at East Rutherford, N.J. as they prepare to meet the Cavaliers (7-3), who are seeking to get back in the win column after a loss at home last Saturday against Maryland.

THE BASICS OF THE MATCHUP: The Tar Heels enter the game ranked No. 5 in the USILA coaches poll and No. 8 in the Inside Lacrosse Nike media poll. Virginia is ranked No. 9 in the USILA coaches poll and No. 9 in the Inside Lacrosse Nike media poll. UNC is 7-3 and coming off a loss to now third-ranked Johns Hopkins 10-9 last Sunday in the Konica Minolta Big City Classic in East Rutherford, N.J. UNC opened with a win over Robert Morris 14-11 before losing at Ohio State 13-8 after being tied at the half with the Buckeyes. A four-game winning streak followed with a come-from-behind win over Navy 10-8, a 13-9 victory over UMBC, a decisive 12-6 win over #9 Penn and a 9-5 victory at #7 Princeton. The Heels then dropped their ACC opener to Duke 14-9 before beating Dartmouth 12-7 and Maryland 11-6 before national TV audiences. Virginia is 7-3 overall and 0-1 in the ACC. Virginia's only losses this year were 12-10 at top-ranked Syracuse, 12-11 at third-ranked Johns Hopkins and 12-7 at home last Saturday against Maryland. The Cavaliers have advanced to the NCAA Tournament semifinals each of the past three seasons.

THE ALL-TIME SERIES WITH THE CAVALIERS: Virginia leads the all-time series with North Carolina 45-20. The Cavaliers have won seven successive games against the Tar Heels, starting with a game in the 2004 NCAA Tournament semifinals and continuing with wins in each of the last six regular season meetings. The series between North Carolina and Virginia began in 1949 and the Cavaliers won the first 16 games in the series through 1975. Carolina's first win came in 1976, a 13-10 Tar Heel victory. Carolina's most successful run in the series came between 1980 and 1996 when the Tar Heels under coaches Willie Scroggs and Dave Klarmann posted wins in 17 of 26 games. Since 1987, the series has been virtually all Cavaliers. Virginia has won 17 of the past 19 meetings. UNC's only wins in that time were a 7-5 win at Klockner Stadium in 2001 and an 11-9 victory at Fetzer Field in 2004.

UNC AT KLOCKNER STADIUM: UNC is 3-8 all-time against Virginia in games played at Klockner Stadium. UNC won two of its first three games against the Cavaliers at Klockner, both in ACC Tournament championship games. UNC won there in 1994 by a 15-7 score and in 1996 by a 13-11 score. Carolina's other win at Klockner Stadium came on April 7, 2001 when UNC won by a 7-5 score behind a 22-save performance by Kris Blindenbacher. The Cavaliers have won four straight over UNC at Klockner, including a 10-9 overtime win in 2007.

LAST YEAR'S MEETING BETWEEN THE TWO TEAMS: The University of Virginia got three goals and an assist from Steele Stanwick and held off a furious rally from North Carolina, defeating the Tar Heels 7-5 in the second game of the Konica Minolta Big City Classic on April 10, 2010 at the Meadowlands Stadium, the then new home of the National Football League's New York Giants and Jets. The game drew a crowd of 25,710 fans, the largest to see a regular-season game in collegiate men's lacrosse history. The game was the second of a tripleheader with Hofstra beating Delaware 12-11 in the opener and No. 3 Syracuse routing No. 5 Princeton in the nightcap 13-4.

With the win, top-ranked Virginia improved to 11-0, 2-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Second-ranked Carolina fell to 10-1, 2-1. It was the third time last season the Tar Heels played a battle of the unbeatens. The Tar Heels had won the first two games against Princeton 12-11 on March 16, 2010 and Maryland 9-7 on March 27, 2010. Virginia led 5-0 early in the second period before the Tar Heels rallied to pull as close as 5-4 midway through the third quarter. Carolina scored just one goal in the final 22:59 of the game, however, and Virginia held on to win 7-5 in a key ACC contest. The Tar Heels limited Virginia's offense, ranked second nationally, to only two goals in the final 41:25 of the match. UNC redshirt junior goalkeeper Chris Madalon made a career high 14 saves, exceeding the 13 he had earlier last year in wins at Navy and UMBC.

CAROLINA'S DOUBLE DIGIT SCORING GAMES:

In Coach Joe Breschi's three years as head lacrosse coach, Carolina's success has often been tied to hitting the 10-goal plateau in a game. UNC has scored at least 10 goals in a game in 31 of 44 games under Coach Breschi dating back to the opening game of the 2009 season. Carolina is 28-3 in those 31 games, losing only 11-10 to Virginia on April 4, 2009, 15-13 to Duke on April 26, 2009 and 12-11 to Duke on May 17, 2009. In the 13 games under Coach Breschi in which the Tar Heels have not reached the 10-goal plateau, UNC is 4-9. The most recent loss was a 10-9 setback against Johns Hopkins last Sunday.

THE FETZER FIELD WINNING STREAK COMES TO AN END: Duke's 14-9 win on March 17, 2011 ended the Tar Heels' 17-game Fetzer Field winning streak. Prior to the loss, UNC had not lost a game at Fetzer Field since Joe Breschi became Carolina's head coach in 2009, a streak which had started with a win over Robert Morris in the `09 season opener. Since the start of his UNC coaching career, Carolina's only three home losses under Breschi include two games played in 2009 -- both against Duke -- but both played at Kenan Stadium -- and then the March 17 loss to Duke at Fetzer Field. Prior to the setback against the Blue Devils, Carolina's last loss at Fetzer Field had came on May 10, 2008, an 8-7 NCAA Tournament first round loss to Navy. UNC then won 17 straight at Fetzer Field. Carolina had also won 12 straight home games overall, regardless of Chapel Hill venue, since losing 15-13 to Duke at Kenan Stadium on April 26, 2009. With the win over Dartmouth on March 22, 2011, UNC is now 18-1 under head coach Joe Breschi at Fetzer Field and 21-3 in home games overall (including games played at Kenan Stadium, Henry Stadium and Navy Field).

THE LAST TIME OUT FOR THE TAR HEELS: Lee Coppersmith scored an unassisted goal for fifth-ranked Johns Hopkins with 1:52 to play in the fourth quarter and it proved to be the difference as the Blue Jays defeated fourth-ranked North Carolina 10-9 before a crowd of 25,115 at the New Meadlowlands Stadium last Sunday. It was the second of three games in the annual Konica Minolta Big City Classic. St. John's defeated Rutgers 9-8 and Syracuse downed Duke 13-11 in the other two games. Billy Bitter led the Tar Heels by recording the 14th hat trick of his career, finishing with four goals. Marcus Holman scored twice for the Tar Heels, Jimmy Dunster had a goal and two assists and Thomas Wood had a goal and an assist. John Ranagan led the Blue Jays with three goals and an assist while Kyle Wharton also had a hat trick for Hopkins. Johns Hopkins improved to 7-2 with the victory and it halted a four-game losing streak against Carolina, beating the Tar Heels for the first time since 2006. North Carolina fell to 7-3. UNC has now played in the first three Big City Classics and each time has come away with a heartbreaking loss, falling to Virginia 11-10 in 2009, Virginia 7-5 in 2010 and now Johns Hopkins 10-9.

A PENCHANT FOR COMEBACKS: North Carolina has fallen behind by two or more goals in the first half of four of their seven victories this season and two of their three losses during 2011. The Tar Heels have trailed Maryland by four goals, Navy and Princeton by three goals and Dartmouth by two goals in the first half of all of those games but in each case has either tied the game by halftime or pulled ahead at intermission en route to recording victories. UNC was tied with both Robert Morris and UMBC in the second quarter of those games but pulled away for solid halftime leads and were never headed. The 12-6 win over Penn was the only wire-to-wire win for UNC as the Heels jumped out to a 6-1 lead in that game after one quarter. In its three losses, the Tar Heels were down to Duke for pretty much the whole game, tying it briefly only once at 1-1. Against Johns Hopkins, the Heels fell behind 4-0 in less than six minutes, rallied to tie the game at 5-5 and then fell behind by three goals again on two occasions. UNC did tie the Blue Jays a second time with less than three minutes to play but Hopkins scored the final goal to record the victory. The Tar Heels surrendered a 5-2 second quarter lead to Ohio State in Columbus, being outscored 8-1 over a span stretching from the second to third quarters and eventually losing 13-8.

DEFENSE STEPPING UP FOR THE TAR HEELS: North Carolina's veteran defense led by close defensemen Ryan Flanagan, Charlie McComas and Kevin Piegare, long-stick midfielder Mark Staines and short-stick defensive midfielders Michael Burns and Chris Hunt has responded well since giving up double digits goals in the first two games of the season -- 11 to Robert Morris and 13 to Ohio State. In the past eight games, UNC has held opponents to single digits six times with the exceptions being a 14-9 loss to Duke and a 10-9 loss to Johns Hopkins. Of those eight games, UNC has held opponents to seven or fewer goals four times.