Cavs stop Terps in semis

By Whitey Reid

Published: April 25, 2008

One nightmarish memory erased. One more to go.
On Friday night at Klockner Stadium, Virginia — behind four goals apiece from Ben Rubeor and Garrett Billings — atoned for a dreadful loss to Maryland earlier this season with an 11-8 victory over the Terrapins.
Third-seeded UVa (12-2) advanced to face top-seeded Duke in the ACC Tournament final on Sunday afternoon. It was just two weeks ago that the Blue Devils embarrassed Virginia on its home field.
“They’re a powerful team, strong on both ends,” Rubeor said. “It’s a challenge we’ve been looking forward to. We wanted to be back in this position.
“They scored the last 10 goals against us. That was unacceptable and hopefully we’ll have a better showing this time.”
If Virginia can play at the level it did on Friday, it should have at least a fighting chance. Against Maryland, UVa played one of its most complete games of the season.
The Cavaliers outshot the Terrapins by eight, won the groundball battle by five and won 12 of 23 faceoffs.
A major key to the performance was getting off to a good start. Virginia was the aggressor from the opening faceoff.
“In the last game, I don’t think we played badly early in the game,” said Virginia coach Dom Starsia, “but we didn’t score and got a little bit frustrated while they gained confidence … they can play at a completely different pace when they have the lead.
“The fact that we were able to put some balls in early gave us a chance to dictate the tempo better.”
UVa jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead on a pair of goals by Billings.
“I had a down weekend last weekend,” Billings said, “so I wanted to come out and have a good game.”
Maryland (8-5), which never led in the game, was able to tie the game at 3-3 on a goal by Max Ritz early in the second quarter, but Virginia answered with three straight goals — two by Billings — to take a 6-3 lead going into halftime.
In the third quarter, Shamel Bratton sparked UVa. The much-heralded freshman scored a pair of nearly identical goals, both coming on crank shots from the outside off assists from Pete Lamade.
Bratton said the team really wanted to redeem itself against Maryland.
“You could see it on our face that we weren’t really ready to play [on March 29],” he said. “You have to sprint and go hard all game. We did that tonight.”
Virginia achieved its biggest lead of the game, 11-6, when Rubeor scored an unassisted goal at the 8:32 mark of the fourth quarter before Maryland was able to tack on two goals within the last two minutes to make the final score seem a lot closer.
“I think the biggest improvement since our last game was on face-offs,” Rubeor said. “In the third quarter, they were playing a decent amount of zone. When a team’s doing that, you can usually get your 12-yard shots, and we were lucky enough to cash in on a couple of those.”
In goal, Bud Petit played his best game of the year, according to Starsia. The fifth-year senior notched eight saves.
Overall, the Cavaliers were much better in their decision-making than they were in the first meeting.
“We really took care of the ball and worked all over the field today,” said junior Danny Glading. “We were a lot smarter on offense than we’ve been all year.”
Duke 17, UNC 6
In the first semifinal, top-seeded Duke defeated No. 4 North Carolina behind four goals from Zack Greer.
The Blue Devils (14-1) exploded in the second half, much like they did in their win over Virginia at Klockner Stadium on April 12.
UNC (8-5) cut the lead to 6-5 on a goal by Cryder DiPietro early in the third quarter before Duke responded with six straight goals to take a commanding 12-5 lead.
“One of our goals is always to play 60 minutes,” Greer said. “The way we get up and down the field, we want to play 60 minutes and hope they can’t hang with us, and that’s what happened today.
“A lot of these teams like to slow it down and aren’t used to playing at a high tempo and that works to our advantage.”
Max Quinzani and Zach Howell added three goals each for Duke, which outshot UNC by 20. The Blue Devils also won the groundball battle, 49-40.