WISE – The regular season is over and it is now "Survive and Advance" time as the Highland Cavalier lacrosse team opens South Atlantic Conference Tournament play at Newberry Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m.

This marks the second straight season that the two teams have met in the conference tournament quarterfinals. Newberry won the meeting last season.

The Cavs are going for history as they enter the game with 99 wins as a program.

The game will be streamed on FloCollege and video and live stats links are located in the upper right or at uvawisecavs.com/coverage.
 
GETTING WISE
- The Cavs are the sixth seed and enter the tournament with a 9-8 overall record and a 6-5 SAC record. They qualified for the tournament with an 18-12 winner-takes-all win at Tusculum Wednesday evening. The team is riding a five game winning streak after going winless in the month of March, though many of those were close losses.
- Newberry won the previous meeting 14-12 in Wise on March 1. The all-time series between the two programs is tied at 5-5, with the Wolves leading 4-2 in Newberry.
- Logen Davis leads the team with 61 points (32 goals, 29 assists), while Noley Hiller (35g-10a) and Kaylea Paterson (21g-24a) each have 45 points. Taryn Moreno leads the squad with 49 ground balls and caused 37 turnovers, while Issie Brown and Grace Golatt each have a team-leading 47 draw controls. Addie Donalson has logged over 800 minutes in cage for the Cavs this season, and has a .439 save percentage.
- This is the ninth postseason appearance for the Cavs. They have reached the conference tournament (SAC or MEC) every year of the program except for two seasons, and one of them was 2020, when the season was cancelled due to Covid 19.
- UVA Wise currently ranks fourth in the SAC in total wins as a program. Limestone is first with 328 wins (LU started their program in the 1990s while the other SAC schools all started their programs after 2010). Lenoir-Rhyne is second with 128 and Wingate is third with 126. Next up is UVA Wise with 99, followed by Newberry with 92. Catawba has 84, LMU 70, Tusculum 64, Coker 56, and Mars Hill 31. Anderson and Emory & Henry are less than three years old, so they are not listed.
- Being the program's only coach in its history, Meghan Denney is the "Dean" of SAC women's lacrosse coaches as she is the longest tenured active head coach at their respective school.
- Win or lose today, the program will have their eighth non-losing season out of eleven seasons.

MEET THE OPPONENT
- Newberry is 12-5 overall and 9-2 in SAC play. They secured the third seed with a 12-10 win over Anderson Wednesday evening.
- The Wolves are outscoring their opponents by a 240-154 goal differential.
- Emma Jobs (50g-6a) leads the team with 56 points, while Amelia Hawkes (34g-9a) has 43 and Serena Elias (38g-4a) has 42 points. Three other players have 20 or more points. Morgan Parsons has 43 ground balls, while three others have more than 20. Three players (Lana Howell, Scythe Shephard, and Jobs) have won 39 draws. Parsons also has caused 23 turnovers. Mackenzie Dorr is the main goalie for the team and has a .543 save percentage and allows 9.58 goals a game.

THINGS TO WATCH
- The team has 99 wins as a program in their eleventh season of competition. A win today would make them the fourth active team in the SAC to reach 100 wins. It would also be Coach Dennehy's 100th win at UVA Wise.
- Several Cavs had personal milestones against Tusculum Wednesday as Golatt hit the century mark in goals and Moreno picked up her 100th ground ball, while Abby Stoffelen picked up her 150th point and Brown won her 150th draw. Stoffelen will enter Saturday's game with 46 career assists, and Taylor Thompson has won 48 draws.
- The program record for caused turnover in a season is 43, set by Erin Smith in 2022. Moreno enters this game with 37, tying her for third with Jessica Apgar (2018).
- The team currently is scoring 20.12 points a game, second only to the 23.68 scored by the 2019 squad. They are also second in assists a game (7.35), trailing 2019's total of 7.89.

UP NEXT
- The winner of this game will face second-seeded Limestone in Gaffney, South Caroline, on April 30 at a time yet to be determined. The Saints are 12-5 overall and 9-2 in SAC play and earned the second seed by defeating Newberry in their meeting this season.