CHARLOTTESVILLE—In a quiet locker room at Gillette Stadium, Mike Thompson was asked about U.Va.’s prospects for the 2010 men’s lacrosse season.

“It’s hard to start thinking about next year so quickly, just because it was such a great group of seniors,” Thompson, a junior from Collegiate School, said after top-seeded Virginia’s 15-6 loss to Cornell in the NCAA semifinals at Foxborough, Mass.

“It always take a while to stomach the loss and the ending of a season.”

That was Saturday afternoon.  A couple of days later, Cavaliers coach Dom Starsia reflected on 2009 and looked ahead to 2010.

First, though, he talked about 2008, when U.Va. finished 14-4 after losing in double overtime to eventual champion Syracuse in the NCAA semifinals, also at Foxborough.

“I felt like it was more of a crapshoot last year,” Starsia said.  “We probably played our best game of the year in the last game.  But when we got back in September, I told the kids that I thought we played our best game and it wasn’t good enough to beat Syracuse and that we had wasted a lot of time from September [2007] until that moment.

“This year I felt like the preparation was much better. It was a much more thorough effort from September [2008] until the opening faceoff in [2009].”

In his postgame comments Saturday at Gillette Stadium, Starsia referred to his team’s “epic year,” which included the pain of dealing with former U.Va. standout Will Barrow’s suicide.

On the field, the Wahoos posted several memorable regular-season victories, beating Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, North Carolina, Maryland and Cornell, among others, and they routed Hopkins 19-8 in the NCAA quarterfinals. 

All those accomplishments notwithstanding, Starsia noted, “you sort of walk away feeling inadequate somehow. I think that there was a lot to be proud of here.  Unfortunately our last game didn’t reflect, I think, who we are or who we’d like to think we are.”

When U.Va. was bad this season, it was awful.  Duke twice thrashed the Cavaliers (15-3), and they weren’t competitive against Cornell in Foxborough.

“There was no indication that we were going to play like that,” Starsia said.  “The kids had been attentive in practice.  Were we taking Cornell for granted?  I think anything anybody wants to say about that is probably fair.  But I didn’t sense any of it.  I thought we were ready.  I did have a gut feeling, as I stood there on the sideline very early in the game, that, ‘This is going to harder than we thought.’  And it was.  We just weren’t up to it, for whatever reason.

“The games can often be the fickle part of this process.  You don’t always get what you deserve.  You just get what you get.  It’s a shame that we sort of finished up that way, but I don’t think it reflects on the quality of the effort overall.”

Going forward, Starsia said, “I’d like to see us be tougher.  I think we could be tougher than we are.  We’re athletic enough to be tougher.  But we were better on [faceoffs and ground balls in 2009 than in ‘08].  We were mentally tough.”

U.Va. loses significant talent, including three of its top four attackmen: Danny Glading, Garrett Billings and Gavin Gill.  But the offensive midfield, led by twins Shamel and Rhamel Bratton, Brian Carroll and John Haldy, should be the nation’s best.

Defensive midfielders Thompson and Chris Clements will return, and Max Pomper, a redshirt junior this season, may be back too.

Elsewhere, goalie Adam Ghitelman has two seasons of eligibility left, and starting defensemen Ken Clausen (a two-time first-team All-American) and Ryan Nizolek will be seniors in 2010.

Mike Timms, a four-year starter at long-stick midfielder, and defenseman Matt Kelly must be replaced.

“I think we’re going to miss Mike Timms in particular, miss his leadership a lot,” Starsia said.  “He just did a lot for us this year.”

Matt Lovejoy, who redshirted this season while recovering from an injury, is expected to take over for Kelly, “and that could be a little bit of an upgrade, frankly,” Starsia said.  “I think we’re OK back there.”

Only one attackman who played a leading role this year will be around in 2010, but it’s the reigning ACC rookie of the year.

“You feel pretty good about building an attack around somebody like Steele Stanwick,” Starsia said.  “We got some really good young attackmen either in the program or coming.  We’re a team that’s always sort of been built around our attack.  So the fact that you don’t have Danny and Garrett is going to be a glaring omission early, but I think we’re going to be good there before it’s all said and done.”

Chris Bocklet, a touted recruit who played little as a freshman this season, is likely to start on attack next season.  Candidates for the final spot there figure to including rising sophomore Matt Kugler and incoming freshman Connor English and Matt White.

“I think we’ve got some good young pieces there,” said Starsia, who singled out White.  “I would tell you I’m not quite positive how it all fits together now, but I think we got some good young players.”

U.Va.’s home schedule for 2010 looks especially attractive.  Among the teams that will visit Klockner Stadium are two-time defending NCAA champion Syracuse, Hopkins and Duke.  For the second straight season, Virginia and North Carolina will meet in East Rutherford, N.J.

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