Coach Dom Starsia's team has won 7 straight games.

BALTIMORE, MD. - All it took was one early goal by Johns Hopkins to spark a fire under the Virginia men's lacrosse team on Saturday afternoon. After Johns Hopkins opened the scoring with a goal in the fourth minute, the fifth-ranked Cavaliers responded by scoring the next four goals and ended up holding on for a gritty 7-5 win over the third-ranked Blue Jays in front of 4,784 on an overcast day at Homewood Field.

"It was a great lacrosse game," Virginia coach Dom Starsia said. "Both teams played really hard, always playing great at both ends of the field, with everybody working. To come up to Homewood today and get this win was certainly significant for us. This is one of those wins that hold up when you're looking at teams at the end of the season."

Ben Rubeor paced the Cavaliers (7-1) with three goals. Danny Glading notched two while Will Barrow and Brian Carroll added one apiece. Garret Billings tallied a team-high three assists.

The key moment of the game occurred a minute and half before halftime. Virginia goalkeeper Kip Turner made a stellar save on a shot by a wide open Johns Hopkins attacker. Seconds later, Barrow scored on a fastbreak opportunity to give the Cavaliers a three-goal lead. Rubeor was credited with the assist on the play.

"When you make a save like that, it just lifts the entire team," Starsia said. "To finish it at the other end with a goal, in a game in which we were struggling to score, gave us a burst of energy right there that kind of carried us for a long period of time."

Turner finished with seven saves, including some big stops down the stretch when the Blue Jays were rallying.

"If you're going to beat Johns Hopkins, you have to have great goalie play because they have such great shooters," Starsia said. "Over the past few years, Kip has not gotten enough credit for how good he's been for us. He's been very consistent."

The pace of Virginia's offensive attack slowed significantly in the second half. The Cavaliers took 20 shots in the first half compared to 13 in the second half while Johns Hopkins got off 20 second half shots compared to 10 in the first half.

"They play very good team defense so we were lucky enough to get out to an early lead," Rubeor said. "You know that they're going to come up with a scheme to counter what you're doing and they were able to do that. What we tried to do once we got that lead was work for the quality shot, the really good opportunity."

Johns Hopkins (4-2) outscored Virginia 3-0 in the fourth quarter as the Blue Jays desperately tried to come back. A goal by Stephen Peyser pulled Johns Hopkins to within two goals with 1:19 remaining, but that would be it for the Blue Jays as Virginia was able to run out the clock.

Danny Glading scored two early goals to give Virginia the lead in Baltimore.

"I wasn't surprised that they made a run at us at the end," Starsia said. "I never felt like the game was over until the very end."

Following the game, Starsia heaped praise on Barrow, who's been coming back from a hamstring injury. The junior midfielder played some stellar defense, in addition to scoring the goal before the half.

"Will Barrow may have been our MVP today," Starsia said. "He was terrific. He's just gotten back and gotten healthy again."

Glading scored Virginia's first two goals to give the Cavaliers the lead that they would not surrender. Overall, it was not UVa's best offensive day, but the effort got the job done.

"We're not ready to score a lot of goals in bunches yet but as we continue to improve, our shooting and our midfield offense in particular, we are going to continue to improve as a lacrosse team," Starsia said.

Johns Hopkins came into the game averaging 11 goals per game. The only team to score fewer than five goals against Virginia thus far this season was VMI.

"The single key defensively was that we were able to control a bunch of the individual match-ups," Starsia said. "[JHU] is a team that really depends on you sliding to them. They've got such good sticks and they've got such good shooters, so if you give them a little bit of room and time, you're done."

The victory was Virginia's third away from Charlottesville this season. The Cavaliers return home next Saturday afternoon for an ACC showdown against Maryland at 3 p.m.

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