USA Lacrosse Magazine released its Way Early Top 25 rankings for the 2025 men’s lacrosse season this week, and Virginia landed at No. 5 after competing in Championship Weekend for the second consecutive year. Ahead of the Cavaliers in the rankings are Ivy League contenders No. 4 Princeton and No. 3 Cornell, as well as two ACC rivals, No. 2 Syracuse and No. 1-ranked defending champion Notre Dame.
USA Lacrosse Magazine writer Patrick Stevens wrote the following analysis of Virginia for the 2025 season. He projects how many starters and points UVA has lost and provides an “initial forecast” of what the Cavaliers might look like next spring:
“Last seen: They were out of form in a 12-6 loss to Maryland that resulted in their second consecutive NCAA semifinal exit. It was also the Cavaliers’ weakest offensive performance in coach Lars Tiffany’s eight seasons in Charlottesville.
Estimated lost starts: 80 out of 180 (44.4 percent)
Expected score at departure: 218 out of 403 points (54.1 percent)
First forecast: It will be different. Program legend Connor Shellenberger is leaving the college scene after winning the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award in 2021 and being a Tewaaraton finalist the next three years. Payton Cormier, the NCAA’s career leading scorer who set a school record with 65 goals in 2024, is also leaving. And Virginia will need a new defensive anchor now that Cole Kastner is no longer eligible to play lacrosse (though he will play basketball at Stanford for one season).
The Cavaliers’ next big star is likely McCabe Millon, who scored 41 goals and 25 assists as a rookie but will be at the top of scouting reports next spring. Many useful players are still in play, including midfielder Griffin Schutz (23 goals, 12 assists), long stick Ben Wayer (98 goals, 26 assists) and short stick Noah Chizmar.
But two things are clear: Virginia needs to improve its defense, which has struggled against the best offenses on the team’s schedule, and it needs to resolve the competition for the goalie spot after Kyle Morris was chosen over benched Matthew Nunes in the semifinals.
Bryant’s Johnny Hackett (23 T, 24 A) is joining us. The same goes for candidate for a comeback through a change of scenery, Charles Balsamo, who scored 20 goals and 11 assists as a freshman at Duke, but slipped to seven goals and nine assists last spring.
Tiffany gave a matter-of-fact assessment of his program’s standards after the loss to Maryland: “We don’t measure ourselves by Final Four banners, we measure ourselves by titles” – but given the changes in some of the top teams, reaching Finals weekend in 2025 could be a more satisfying accomplishment for the Cavaliers than usual.”
Check out the full Way Early USA Lacrosse Magazine Top 25 rankings below, and click here to see what Stevens wrote about the rest of the teams in his Way Early Top 25.
- Notre-Dame
- Syracuse
- Cornell
- Princeton
- Virginia
- Maryland
- duke
- Yale
- Johns Hopkins
- Denver
- Penn State
- Towson
- Michigan
- Georgetown
- army
- Penn
- North Carolina
- Harvard
- Lehigh
- Ohio State
- Albany
- Villanova
- Colgate
- Richmond
- Rutgers/Providence
