Hoos Still #1

While yesterday's basketball victory over Maryland was probably the highlight of the UVA sports weekend, the lacrosse team added to the fun by playing its best game of the season to beat rival Syracuse in a matchup of the #1 and #3 teams in the country.

Briggs is one of many who can light up the scoreboard for the Hoos (Photo: Viginiasports.com)

The Hoos survived a first half scoring lull by exploding for six goals in the third quarter, establishing a lead for the rest of the game. Colin Briggs led the Hoos with a hat trick, while Rob Emery added a couple, including probably the finest goal of the game (though Briggs' one-man-dodging-the-entire-defense show in the first half was amazing too).

The real story though was the domination on groundballs and faceoffs. The Hoos doubled up Cuse on groundballs 42-21 and simply dominated them 20-8 on faceoffs. In a couple of the earlier games this season, the team looked pretty mediocre at faceoffs - and frankly, anytime we lose a game, I'm usually assigning a lot of the blame to our struggles there. Yesterday, they put any concerns of that to rest. Another HUGE worry-turned-strength was goalie Rob Fortunato, who had 16 saves and some great clears. If Fortunato keeps playing up to this level, UVA's going to be a good bet to repeat...but it's still incredibly early.

While not taken yesterday, this photo sums up the result nicely. (Lax.com)

The team hosts Vermont Tuesday night before playing #2 Cornell on Saturday. Look for a more in-depth Wahooze analysis of the team following this week's games.