Virginia looks for third win this year over Notre Dame lacrosse, this time in the NCAA semifinals

CHARLOTTESVILLE – Virginia lacrosse never has beaten the same opponent three times in a single lacrosse season. If it’s going to claim its third national championship in its last four NCAA tournaments, it’ll have to do just that.

“Playing a really talented team like Notre Dame a third time, it’s really easy for me, and I hope my team, to ignore the first two,” said Tiffany, whose second-seeded Cavaliers face the No. 3-seed Fighting Irish on Saturday. “I certainly know, our men know, those games have been battles.”

UVa beat Notre Dame 15-10 in South Bend, Indiana, on March 25, and 12-8 in Charlottesville on April 30. How does Irish coach Kevin Corrigan look at those results and their potential bearing on Saturday’s third installment of the series?

Quite simply.

“We have to find a way to be better than we were in the first two,” Corrigan said Tuesday, “because we didn’t win.”

This is just the second time in Tiffany’s seven years with the Cavaliers that they’ll face the same opponent three times in one season. In 2021, on its way to the national championship, UVa split with North Carolina in the regular season, but beat the Tar Heels 12-11 in the NCAA semifinals in Hartford, Conn.

Before that, the last time Virginia faced the same team thrice in a single year came in 2010, when – after splitting with Duke in the regular season – it lost to the Blue Devils in the national semifinals in Baltimore.

Facing an ACC opponent in the final four certainly isn’t new for UVa. Since the start of the 2010 season, that’s happened four times. Virginia is 3-1 in those matchups and has won the past three such games.

Similarly, facing familiar foes for rematches in May is nothing new. This will be the sixth time in the past five NCAA tournaments Virginia plays a team it also faced in the regular season. It’s 3-2 in those games.

Virginia captain Grayson Sallade said the setting for Saturday’s game – and all that is on the line – means the previous outcomes matter even less than they normally might.

“I think we’ve had their number of the last few years,” Sallade said. “And they know that and we know that. But when it comes to the final four all that’s thrown out the window and what you’ve done during the regular season doesn’t matter. Your wins. Your losses. The heightened stage kind of gets rid of all of that.”

As for the common sports cliché that its hard to beat a team three times in a season, Tiffany questions whether the facts back that up.

“Somebody show me the data,” Tiffany said. “Somebody show me the statistical assessment of college and professional and high school sports over the past 100 years that proves that.”

Going back through the program’s recorded history, dating to the 1925 season, Virginia lacrosse has only faced the same opponent three times in a single season four times – and it’s never won all three. A more promising statistical omen for the Cavaliers? They are 3-1 all-time in the third meetings of the year.

But for this week, the company line for both teams is, the past is simply prologue to this weekend, nothing more.

“No one’s really thinking about those games,” Virginia leading scorer Xander Dickson said. “I’m sure their locker room is saying the same things. That it doesn’t matter. Which it doesn’t. Whoever’s playing their best lacrosse right now is going to hold the trophy up come Monday.”