Virginia carried a 3-1 lead into the last eight minutes of its game against Queens on Tuesday. Then the visiting Royals scored. Five minutes later, Virginia answered, and 36 seconds after that, Queens scored again.<\/p>\n
All hell was breaking loose and yet everything, for Virginia, was crystallizing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers (5-5-1, 2-2 ACC) ended up beating the Royals (3-6-2, 2-1-2 ASUN) 4-3, lodging critical points in a rollercoaster campaign. But there may not be a more apt microcosm of their situation than the ending Tuesday at Kl\u00f6ckner Stadium \u2014 for good and bad.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy that at the end we pulled it out for a win,\u201d fourth-year midfielder Brendan Lambe said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the scoreline you really want. You\u2019d rather it be 4-1 instead of 4-3.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things looked rosier at the start, when third-year forward Arnold Matshazi, making his first start back from injury, opened the scoring in the sixth minute. Queens equalized a minute later. But second-year defender Zachary Ehrenpreis headed in a second in the 17th minute, and Lambe, who assisted the first two goals, hammered in a third in the 21st minute.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Virginia scored twice more before halftime. Before the wild ending, the Cavaliers spent 62 minutes sitting on a 3-1 lead. Coach George Gelnovatch, employing another limited bench to \u201cmake sure we win this game,\u201d was preparing a raft of substitutions. He ended up having to go the other way, putting starters back in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All three of the Royals\u2019 goals came the same way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s balls into our penalty area,\u201d Gelnovatch said. \u201cIt\u2019s all it is.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is not a new phenomenon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery goal is just balls, and they\u2019re not even great balls,\u201d Gelnovatch said. \u201cThey\u2019re balls just kind of put into the box, usually with numbers.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Queens\u2019 first goal came on a free kick from near half-field, arced toward the back post \u2014 a Queens head, a stabbing Virginia foot, then the ball looping off the crossbar and into the goal. The second goal was another ball in, not dealt with, and thundered home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a fundamental breakdown of our defensive shape, where they\u2019re bopping it around and runners in the box and cutbacks and side foots on the ball,\u201d Gelnovatch said. \u201cThe balls are just floated into the box, pinballing around, and they\u2019re getting on the end of it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This has been the team\u2019s scourge all season \u2014 funky goals, surprising given the personnel. Virginia\u2019s 3-5-2 formation is anchored by fifth-year Sebastian Pop and second-year Zach Ehrenpreis, two of the most imposing defenders in college soccer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is especially frustrating for Virginia because of how good the team has been going forward. Virginia strung together a handful of nice sequences and hogged 58 percent of the possession, with 12 corners to Queens\u2019 three.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Matshazi\u2019s opener came after third-year midfielder Alex Parvu beat a man down the right flank. Lambe and fourth-year midfielder Marco Dos Santos worked the ball on the edge of the penalty area before crossing to a wide open Ehrenpreis on the back post for the second. Lambe mustered a bit of magic for the third, sidling past three players in the center of the field and banging in a goal \u2014 again after sustained possession.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And fourth-year forward AJ Smith, who has been Virginia\u2019s goal-scoring engine all season, now having scored six goals, interchanged with Tandjigora \u2014 a cool, composed counter \u2014 before slotting home for the fourth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got full control, we\u2019re doing all the hard things, creating chances, penalty areas,\u201d Gelnovatch said. \u201cWe\u2019re scoring goals. We\u2019re scoring three goals. We\u2019re scoring four goals, and it is not easy to score four goals on a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is just that defending. These are second chances, the fifty-fifty moments waiting for somebody to grab them. Easy to diagnose and impossible to find a quick fix for.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always knockdowns, right?\u201d Gelnovatch said. \u201cWhich sometimes is hard to coach because it\u2019s so unpredictable. But when it\u2019s happened to us this much, there\u2019s something to it. A lot of it\u2019s mentality.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gelnovatch started first-year defender Isaac Mwakutuya in the third centerback role. In the past two weeks, that role has alternated between Mwakutuya and third-year Jed Akwaboah. Mwakutuya starts when Virginia is planning on going forward more \u2014 Akwaboah in more defensive games.<\/p>\n
But this is not a personnel issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The game ended when Dos Santos rebuffed a last cross by Queens. That was the end of the game and the start of yet another reckoning focused on funky goals.<\/p>\n
As the buzzer sounded, a jolly voice boomed the news that Gelnovatch had just won his 400th game. He really did not care much. As the news has come closer, he has reflected on his time here.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut to be honest, we\u2019re 5-5. So I\u2019m a little bit more concerned,\u201d Gelnovatch said. \u201cFour hundred wins. I don\u2019t give a damn. We\u2019re one game at a time, one game at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He digressed, again, to the team. The game left Gelnovatch lamenting into the chilly night sky.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can get better at the things that I’m talking about, we have a damn good team,\u201d Gelnovatch said. \u201cIf we can just get better at that, and that’s easy to get better at. The part that we’re really good at is hard, really hard. We just got to get better at that, and we will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Liebermann<\/p>\n
Michael Liebermann is a senior associate on the sports desk and formerly served as a sports editor for the 136th term of The Cavalier Daily. He is a fourth-year College student, majoring in English in the literary prose concentration. Michael is from Westfield, N.J., and enjoys writing about men\u2019s soccer, basketball and lacrosse. Outside of The Cavalier Daily, Michael is involved in Men\u2019s Club Soccer and the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virginia carried a 3-1 lead into the last eight minutes of its game against Queens on Tuesday. Then…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-367333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}