Cavalier Approach Halts USD : Soccer: Virginia wins NCAA men’s title with precise passing and a defense that blanks the Toreros, 2-0.

Virginia held the powerful University of San Diego offense scoreless for the first time this season and the Cavaliers won their second consecutive NCAA Division I men’s soccer championship, 2-0, Sunday.

The top-ranked Cavaliers (21-2-1) scored twice in the second half and extended their NCAA tournament unbeaten streak to 15 matches.

“We were told all season that we were supposed to win this,” Virginia Coach Bruce Arena said. “As you know, it’s never easy to accomplish. . . . We set our sights on recapturing this championship. And the kids did it.”

And they did it in style.

The 13th-ranked Toreros (19-5), who blistered Davidson with 17 shots in a 3-2 victory Friday in the semifinals, were held without a shot in the first half and managed only five in the second half.

“(The Cavaliers) are big and physical across the board and they knocked us off the ball in the first half,” Torero Coach Seamus McFadden said. “They have speed, quickness and size. All those things put together make them extremely difficult to beat.”

The Toreros found themselves playing defense most of the first half.

The bright side for the Toreros was that despite being outshot 10-0 in the opening 45 minutes, they went into halftime maintaining a scoreless tie.

“I wasn’t very happy with the first half. They were getting behind our defense too often,” McFadden said. “So I told the team to put more pressure on them in the second half and perhaps things would be a little better.”

Unfortunately for the Toreros, Virginia was just warming up.

“We played a tremendous first half and had nothing to show for it,” Arena said. “I was nervous at the half, but the kids told me not to worry about it. They were confident they would go out in the second half and win this game.”

The confidence was evident as the Cavaliers put even more pressure on the Toreros and goalkeeper Scott Garlick.

With 20 minutes 29 seconds remaining in the match, the Cavaliers finally beat Garlick when Brad Agoos played a ball through the Torero defense on the ground to Nate Friends.

Friends, who came into the match only eight minutes earlier to replace an injured Ben Crawley, took the pass from Agoos, recovered his deflected shot off Garlick and chipped the ball into the open net.

“I was making a slicing run through the defense and Brad Agoos gave me a pretty good ball,” Friends said. ‘The keeper came out and I barely touched it. He was expecting a shot, so he came out feet first.

“The ball went off his foot and it ended up back on my foot, which surprised me. . . . After that I was just trying to get the ball back in play toward the goal and it went in.”

After the goal, the Toreros began to put more pressure on Virginia keeper Jeff Causey, who came up with two impressive saves.

His first key save came when midfielder David Beall took a ball at his feet in the penalty area, turned on a defender and fired toward goal. Causey moved to his right and flicked the ball just wide of the net.

The second big save came just two minutes later when defender Kevin Arthur made a run and blasted a shot toward the corner of the goal from 22 yards. Again Causey dived to his right to stop the shot.

“We had some opportunities in the second half to score,” McFadden said. “If we had scored then, maybe that would have lifted us up a little bit.”

As much as USD would try to get back into the match, the Cavaliers would have the answer. Virginia used more precise passing to score with 12:27 remaining.

On the goal, Virginia midfielder Claudio Reyna brought the ball into the Torero penalty box and slid a pass to Agoos. Agoos lofted a pass across the face of the goal to defender Erik Imler, who headed the ball in from six yards.

“I was waiting for the ball to come across and it seemed to hang in the air forever,” Imler said. “Finally it came down and I just concentrated on getting it on goal.”

Virginia, which outshot USD, 17-5, held on to the shutout, won its third title in four years and became the only team since Indiana in 1982-83 to repeat as champions.

“They are definitely the best team we’ve played all season,” McFadden said. “You’re only as good as the competition allows you to be. Today they were the better team.”