Remember last week, when I said that the Virginia Women's Soccer team had both won big and lost big in the month of September? Well apparently the ladies were fond of that theme and wanted to keep it up.
On Sunday, the Cavaliers traveled to Chapel Hill to face fifth-ranked North Carolina. And they beat them. On a golden goal. In the second overtime. On national television. Oh, and its Virginia's first win over Carolina... ever.
Win big? I think so.
Lets take a look at some of the details after the jump.
After three scoreless periods against the Tar Heels at Fetzer Field, Virginia made their first shot of the second overtime count.
Freshman Morgan Brian threaded the needle between two defenders at the top of the box and hit Junior Caroline Miller in stride behind the defense. Miller shot to the left of the approaching goalie and the ball sailed into the net just inside the left goal post. And then the celebration began. Have to enjoy seeing your team dogpile on another school's pitch.
The goal was Miller's tenth of the season, keeping her in the team lead (10g, 3a). The assist was Brian's fourth of the season (3g, 4a).
An interesting statistic from the game is that Virginia had six players contribute at least 100 minutes of play during this game (ten minutes more than a normal complete game). That includes Brian, who came in right at 100 minutes. Carolina, on the other hand, had only two players notch more than 100 minutes and in fact only five tallied more than 70 minutes. It's nice to see the Cavaliers have the endurance to outlast a very good Carolina team under those conditions.
Also of note, this was the first time the Cavaliers had been outshot. I made a big deal about that in my last article as I thought the numbers were impressive and indicative of a squad that just needed to finish a couple of shots and they could be very dominant. Well, the Tar Heels edged them 11-10. So while they were outshot, it wasn't by all that much.
The win was the second over a top-ten ACC team in ten days. The Cavaliers defeated then sixth-ranked Maryland 4-1 on September 15th.
This crazy September isn't quite over yet. On Thursday, the ladies are back down in the Tar Heel state, but this time they travel to nearby Durham to face the fourth-ranked Blue Devils. Let's hope the Cavaliers want to continue the "win big" part of the month.
By the way, you can take a look at the golden goal yourself over on Virginia Sports TV.