Now, maybe people will stop writing all those uncomplimentary things about A.J. Wood.
Wood ended a career's worth of frustration in the Final Four and set a record in the process as Virginia won an unprecedented fourth straight NCAA men's soccer championship by beating Indiana 1-0 Sunday.Wood scored his 13th goal in NCAA competition against the Hoosiers, but it was his first after three previous finals in which he'd failed to score. That lone goal helped Virginia (22-3-1) win its fifth national title.
In 1992, Wood scored in the semifinals against Duke.
"The past two years, I've been hurt coming into the finals," Wood said. "I remember my second year, I had about eight shots and got completely demolished by every publication there is about how many times I missed - how many goalposts I've hit, how many crossbars I've hit, how many times I haven't really stepped up."
This time, Wood can give it back to the critics.
"Now, what can you say?" he asked. "This is what I've been trying to do for the past three years."
Also, the Cavaliers stretched their postseason unbeaten streak to 27 games, and their NCAA unbeaten mark to 24. It was the fourth successive shutout for Virginia in the title game, also an NCAA record.
The victory also gave seniors Wood, Nate Friends, Tain Nix and Clint Peay a clean sweep for their time at Virginia.
"From a team standpoint, this year, it's really a tribute to our hard work and our spirit," Friends said. "We started off pretty bad, and as the season went on, we jelled as a team."
The victory was a partial reprieve for Mike Fisher. The all-Atlantic Coast Conference performer and Virginia's third-leading scorer was disqualified after receiving his third yellow card of the NCAA tournament in Friday's semifinal victory over Rutgers.
"We have a very good team. Great teams rise to the occasion," Virginia coach Bruce Arena said. "When players go down, you've got to replace them. We didn't make an issue of it, and that's what our strategy was. If Indiana beat us today, we weren't going to use Fisher as a reason for that. We just said, `Let's go.' "
Virginia also managed to win the title without a Final Four goal from Friends, who had all five of his team's goals in last year's semifinals and finals.
Indiana (23-3-0) was going for its first title since 1988, when it beat Howard 1-0.
Nix got the ball along the left sideline and sent a crossing pass toward Brandon Pollard inside the box. He passed to Wood, whose shot rolled inside the left post and past Indiana goalie Scott Coufal.
The Hoosiers took 11 shots at Virginia goalie Mark Peters, three of them within two minutes late in the second half. His final crucial save came in the 57th minute, when Harry Weiss took a cross from John Vanbuskirk to the right of the goalmouth. Peters stuffed the shot just in front of the post and cradled the ball.
"We had a lot of free kicks all around, and a lot of corners," said Indiana's Brian Maisonneuve, "and that's usually a strength of ours.
"Today, we just couldn't finish them. I had a couple of opportunities I didn't put away, and the team in general had a couple of chances we just couldn't capitalize on."
The two schools now lay claim to a combined seven championships and 13 appearances in the national final. Indiana had hoped it would be the team to increase the number of titles.
"In this profession, you get the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows," Indiana coach Jerry Yeagley said, "and you can't get much lower than this."
The tournament ended its three-year run at Davidson College with a record attendance of 23,881. Sunday's sellout crowd totaled 12,033.