Brian Earl and Mason Rocca, meet Jess Wasilewski and Megan Havrilla.
The latter two names, both graduates of Conestoga High School, scored the three biggest goals of the night in Virginia's absolutely stunning 14-13 win over Duke.
You might remember that Earl and Rocca were on that Princeton team that so famously erased a 33-9 halftime deficit to beat Penn, 50-49, at the Palestra in 1999. Well, tonight, the Cavaliers were down 8-3 at the half and 13-4 with 20:46 to play in the game.
But after that, Virginia made this writer look pretty dumb for using the word deluge to describe Northwestern's first half against Penn.
Starting at 17:09 to go in the game, the Cavs scored five times in a span of just under three minutes to cut the deficit to 13-9. And they kept chipping away, ever so slowly. Wasilewski made it 13-11 with 9:37 to play, then Havrilla cut the deficit to one goal 39 seconds later.
The big cluster of orange-clad Virginia fans sitting at the top of the lower deck let out a roar so loud that it genuinely startled the media in the press room, many of whom were frantically writing stories to make deadline.
Virginia continued to possess the ball and storm Duke's net, and Havrilla tied the game with 4:47 to go. When Duke's Rachel Sanford was assessed a yellow card with 2:59 remaining, the fans around me started to realize that Virginia actually had a very good chance of winning this thing.
The ball kept staying in Virginia's sticks, and after Duke called timeout with just under a minute left, the Cavaliers set up to grab the win. The clock kept moving, and with nine seconds to go, Wasilewski cut inside and fired her team to victory.
It added up to ten straight Virginia goals, the largest comeback in the history of NCAA Tournaments in women's lacrosse.
Cue bedlam, and even more at the final horn as coach Julie Myers threw all the papers in her hand up in the air and ran around as fast as any of her players had all night.
"The thing about me is, I always believe that it will never rain on us and we will always win games," Myers said after the game. "It's not that I don't recognize the deficit or the trouble that we may be in -- I may be naive, but I'm a full believer in the things that I work with."
Wasiliewski was just as happy.
"I heard another attack say, 'You've got to go, you've got to go,'" she said. "So I just took it and shot, and hoped for the best."
"It's unbelievable," she continued. "Obviously it's an honor to be in the Final Four, and to have it in my hometown with friends and family is one thing, and to score the winning goal is just amazing."
Havrilla admitted that being at Franklin Field "definitely had something to do with how I was playing."
"It's just an amazing feeling, and being at home in Philly makes it all the better," she said.
I tried to get Havrilla and Wasilewski to admit the sort of obvious, which is that they beat Duke, of all teams, in the national semifinals -- an ACC rival, a team that beat them 19-18 earlier in the season in Charlottesville, and it just being Duke. But Havrilla didn't really go for it.
"They're a great team -- I know a lot of their players," Havrilla said.
Wasilewski did, though.
"Revenge was a big part of it," she said. "The fact that it was an ACC team, that we were seeded together in the Final Four, to get to a national championship game -- everything just stacked up together to make it an incredible win."
Myers was asked a bunch of questions about Northwestern after the game. There's not much of a point in going through all her answers, but she did quite conveniently sum up everything.
"Northwestern is good," she said. "They're good. They were good then. They're good now, they will probably be good tomorrow, on Sunday, next year, and probably for five more years."
Myers also said that she made sure her team got to see some of the sights in town.
"After we had our shootaround today, we went to the Art Museum and everyone ran up the steps. When you're in Philadelphia, you do try to take it in and enjoy things here."
That includes a certain culinary delicacy that one would have to think isn't exactly good for a well-trained athlete's body.
"We're not great eaters, so certainly, they will have a cheesesteak," Myers said. "We're not afraid."
