Chansky's Notebook: Unbeatable?

Surely, there’s a team out there that will give the UNC women’s lacrosse team a game.

I was late getting to the start of Sunday’s NCAA tournament second-rounder between top-seeded Carolina and Virginia, which turned out to mean it’s a bad regional.

Driving to campus, for a moment, I thought I had the wrong day or wrong time. Plenty of parking spaces were available and most of the noise came from soccer and disc golf on the intramural fields.

I walked into the back open gate of Dorrance Field with nobody checking my credential, which of course I didn’t have. It was halftime, and a sparse crowd was milling around the concourse. Then I looked at the scoreboard: 13 to 2!

Jenny Levy is going for her third national championship in 27 seasons with perhaps her best Tar Heel team ever. They earned one of the three first-round byes and had to wait for the Southern Cal-Virginia winner from Friday. USC was 13-4 coming in, UVA 9-9, so it was a wasted trip across the country for the Trojan women.

Carolina scored early and often in the first half, going up 13-0 before Virginia’s two goals right at the end. Those must have toasted Levy’s ladies, who outscored Virginia 11-0 from there. Fourteen different players had goals.

Jamie Ortega, being shadowed and double-teamed by the woebegone Wahoos, scored four goals with one after halftime when Levy played everyone in uniform. The 24 goals set a UNC record for the NCAA tournament, by the way, along with winning a 19th straight game and 31st in a row at home.

If the Heels don’t win their third NCAA title, someone has rubbed greasy kid stuff on their sticks. The quarterfinal is next weekend in Chapel Hill and the Final Four is hosted by Johns Hopkins, which is 10-8 and likely will be done by that weekend.

If she does win it again, Levy would have one more title than Dean Smith and equal Roy Williams’ three, leaving her behind only Karen Shelton (9) and Anson Dorrance (22) in UNC team sports.

Levy praised her squad, but what would her co-champion coaches say about this blowout? Smith would be mad that the game wasn’t on TV (it was, streaming) and Ol’ Roy would say it always looks better when the ball goes into the net.

Yep, 24 times better.

Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Jeffrey A. Camarati

Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Chansky’s Notebook: Unbeatable?

On Air Now: 97.9 FM