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Lacrosse upsets No. 2 Virginia**

The lacrosse team needed to bounce back in a big way from its loss to Hobart last weekend.

The Blue Devils responded like a superball against Virginia Saturday.

The ninth-ranked Blue Devils defeated the No. 2 Cavaliers 9-8 on Saturday, ending UVa's seven-game winning streak and handing Virginia its first loss ever at Klockner Stadium (opened in 1993) in Charlottesville, Va.

"I don't think we've ever beaten a No. 2-ranked team before," Duke head coach Mike Pressler said. "It's one of the best wins we've had around here in a long, long time. We've beaten them two out of the last three years, both times at their place. In 1992, we beat them for the first time since 1950."

Every facet of the Duke team was involved in stopping the streak, but none was more important than the play of goalie Joe Kirmser, the cornerstone of a great defensive effort by the Blue Devils. The sophomore stopped 16 Cavalier shots and allowed only eight goals. The only time UVa had been held below eight goals this season was in its previous loss to Princeton, 14-6.

"We got great goalie play," Pressler said. "I think that was one of the keys for us. Joe Kirmser had the best game of his career."

"The last few weeks, I was kind of playing not to lose," Kirmser said. "After the Hobart game, I wanted to make this game me against the Virginia goalie.

"It was definitely my best game."

The other part of the puzzle that fell into place to produce the stifling Duke defense was the flexibility and depth of players that Pressler had available to slow Virginia down with waves of defenders.

"We rotated two units of three [defenders] and what that did, on a hot day, was keep fresh legs on a very potent attack," Pressler said. "That was the difference on the defensive end and then Joe was by far the player of the game for us."

The stinginess of the Duke defense allowed the offense to take its time setting up good shots, never rushing even when the Blue Devils fell behind 4-1 in the second quarter.

"We had a game plan going in," Pressler said. "We were going to control the tempo, slowing it down on offense really for the first time. We valued each possession. We held the ball for a minute to two minutes every time we had it on offense and took not a lot of shots but quality shots, and that was the difference on offense."

The slow-down strategy payed off handsomely for Duke in the second half. After scoring the final goal of the first half to make the score 6-4, the Blue Devils rattled off three unanswered goals in the third quarter to take a 7-6 lead going into the game's final period.

Ross Moscatelli scored the go-ahead goal with the score tied at six, and then scored another go-ahead goal after Virginia knotted the score at 7-7 early in the fourth quarter. Ken Fasanaro's second goal of the game was the game winner with 4:05 remaining in the contest, as Virginia did score once more in the final minutes to produce the final score of 9-8.

"We had to keep them under 10," Pressler said. "We didn't want to get into a run-and-gun shoot out like Carolina did because they beat Carolina by 10 doing it that way. We had to make Virginia play at a tempo they're not accustomed to playing. Princeton beat them earlier in the season doing the same thing and we kind of took a page out of Princeton's book. We slowed them down and made them play half-field."

For the game, Moscatelli scored twice and had one assist. Fasanaro matched those numbers, while Matt Ogelsby paced the Duke offense with three goals.

"We had some tremendous individual performances," Pressler said. "Our lead guys had to be superior and Matt was."

Duke did all the little things right on this day, and the score reflected it. They beat Virginia in the hustle categories and a little luck helped them finish off the Cavaliers.

"We won 13 of 21 faceoffs and that's something we've been below 50 percent or right at 50 percent all year, and Virginia is a very good faceoff team," Pressler said. "Virginia out groundballed North Carolina by 25 and we out groundballed them by a couple. Everything went our way.

"Lady luck was on our side. We had a couple of pipe shots where they had beaten us, gotten behind Joe, [Kirmser] and hit the pipes. Everything had to go our way to win a one-goal game against Virginia, and everything did."