Virginia attackman Steele Stanwick, widely regarded as the top player in college lacrosse, finished with eight points to lift the No. 2 Cavaliers over the No. 9 Terps on Saturday. The defeat knocked the Terps from contention for the ACC regular-season title.

Virginia’s Steele Stanwick is the most decorated player in college lacrosse. The senior attackman won the Tewaaraton Trophy as the sport’s top player last season and is considered a favorite to repeat this year.

On Saturday, he lived up to his billing.

Stanwick tied a career high with eight points on three goals and five assists, and No. 2 Virginia secured a 12-8 win over the No. 9 Terrapins men’s lacrosse team before 6,445 at Byrd Stadium.

Though the Baltimore native impacted the game for the full 60 minutes, it was a three-minute stretch in the fourth quarter that proved most critical.

With little more than 10 minutes left in a rematch of last May’s national championship game, Stanwick netted a shot past goalie Niko Amato to put the Cavaliers up 9-7. After Terps midfielder Drew Snider responded with a goal of his own 28 seconds later, Stanwick fed junior Matt White for a score that gave Virginia a 10-8 advantage.

Then he made the play of the game. Starting behind the goal, Stanwick darted past freshman defender Goran Murray and drew a double-team from junior defenseman Brian Cooper. While falling to the ground just in front of the crease, he managed to score for an 11-8 lead with 7:34 remaining.

It was a highlight befitting the reigning national player of the year.

“He’s a great player,” Terps midfielder Landon Carr said after the game. “He does some miraculous things.”

The Terps’ troubles didn’t start with Stanwick. They were without second-line midfielder Kevin Cooper, who was serving a one-game suspension for his part in an on-field fight at North Carolina a week earlier. The team also had to play starting midfielder Mike Chanenchuk (undisclosed injury) almost exclusively on extra-man opportunities.

With the Terps shorthanded, Virginia (9-1, 1-0) simply wore them down.

After going down 2-0 early, the Terps (5-3, 1-2 ACC) roared back to secure a 7-5 lead midway through the third quarter. From that point on, however, they struggled. The Cavaliers dominated on groundballs and faceoffs in the game’s most crucial moments, giving them a clear advantage in possession.

“I think probably every break in the action when we had the team together in the second half, we were talking about picking the ball up off the ground,” Cavaliers coach Dom Starsia said. “It just felt like that was going to make a difference in the game – possessing the ball. It was a game where we sort of needed to grind it out.”

The fourth quarter was all Virginia. It seemed to figure out Amato (12 saves), finishing a remarkable 6-1 run over a 16-minute span to hand John Tillman his first back-to-back losses as Terps coach. The team, led by Stanwick’s high school teammate Joe Cummings (two goals and one assist), is now out of contention for the ACC regular-season title.

That was hardly Tillman’s chief concern Saturday. The Terps have games against Navy and No. 1 John Hopkins before starting the ACC Tournament in a few weeks. During that stretch, he’d like his team to solve its fourth-quarter woes. The Terps have surrendered five goals in the final period of all three of their losses this season.

“The fourth quarter, it’s not been our quarter. And that’s something we [normally] take pride in,” Tillman said. “Obviously, when you’re behind, you’ve got to force the issue a little bit. And with a young group down there, that’s really not our strength.”

That’s not the case for Virginia. After all, it has the benefit of relying upon one of the game’s most clutch performers. Whenever the Cavaliers need a spark, Stanwick’s ready to lend a helping hand.

“Your big boys in crunch time – you want to win at this level, that’s what you’ve got to have,” Starsia said. “And that’s what [Stanwick] did for us when that game needed to be decided late.”

letourneau@umdbk.com