Saint Joseph’s v Richmond: Six in a Row on the Line in the A10 Final

Five straight titles. Eleven straight finals. And Richmond, the one team in the league that keeps getting in Saint Joseph’s way, standing across the pitch again at noon today.

That’s the Atlantic 10 final in a nutshell. Top seed Saint Joseph’s against second seed Richmond, Saturday at Cary Street Field in Richmond, Virginia, with the league’s automatic NCAA bid waiting for the winner. First pass is noon ET, 10pm PKT, live on ESPN+.

The Hawks don’t lose these games. Usually.

Saint Joseph’s got here the hard way on Thursday, grinding out a 2-1 win over fourth seed Davidson. Alison Buffington put them ahead after five minutes, Alex Enslin doubled it in the third quarter, and Davidson’s Ise Adams only pulled one back in the final minute. Goalkeeper Avianna Wagner made four saves. Job done, no drama, which is exactly how the Hawks like it.

The numbers behind this run are silly. This is their 11th straight A10 final, the longest active streak in Division I now that North Carolina’s own 11-year run has ended. They’ve won the last five titles, including last year’s 2-0 win over Richmond in this very fixture. Eight of the last nine, if you want the full picture.

And this year’s version might be the most impressive of the lot. First-year head coach Sam Brown was named A10 Coach of the Year, senior Milou Kluyt repeated as Defensive Player of the Year, and the Hawks swept through the regular season 6-0 in the league despite a 10-9 overall record that tells you how tough their non-conference schedule was. They beat Richmond 3-1 back on 25 September at Ellen Ryan Field, Kiki Bruning opening the scoring in the 24th minute.

Richmond have their own reasons to believe

Don’t write the Spiders off. They’ve been here before too, and they earned this final the dramatic way, with Clara Larripa scoring a golden goal 7:12 into overtime to beat host VCU 2-1 on Thursday. Larripa is the player who hurt Saint Joseph’s in last year’s regular season meeting too, scoring early in a 2-0 Richmond win at Crenshaw Field. She turns up in big games.

Richmond are 12-6, finished 5-1 in the league, and their only conference defeat all season came against the Hawks. They’ve had two days to sit with that September loss and plan for the rematch. The final is on their patch, or near enough: Cary Street Field is VCU’s ground, but it’s Richmond’s city, and the Spiders will have plenty of support in the stands.

What decides it

Saint Joseph’s defence, probably. Kluyt runs that back line, and the Hawks have made a habit of winning tight, low-scoring finals. Richmond need Larripa and Valen Luna Paratore to find space that the Hawks rarely give away. If the Spiders score first, this gets very interesting very quickly. If the Hawks get their noses in front, they’ve shown for five years running that they know how to close a final out.

For our money, Saint Joseph’s are favourites, and rightly so. Five straight titles don’t happen by accident. But Richmond have already beaten them once in the last 13 months, and a sixth straight crown is the kind of streak that ends on a day like this, in front of a home crowd, in overtime, with one golden goal.

Either way, the winner is straight into the NCAA Tournament. The selection show is Sunday night.