On the exact spot where he refused to play a game in 1997, Denison University men's lacrosse coach Mike Caravana experienced his first victory over Roanoke College on Saturday.

"It's going to make the ride home go a lot faster," said Caravana after the Big Red upset Roanoke College 14-7 in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

It was Caravana's first victory in six games with Roanoke, the most recent in 1995.

The teams were set to play at Salem in 1997, but the Maroons wanted to move the game from Alumni Field, which had been resodded, to a nearby practice field.

"The water [on the practice field] was over our ankles," Caravana said. "That put me in a tough spot."

Caravana put his team back on its bus and made the 400-mile trip back home to Granville, Ohio.

A lot has happened since then. The Maroons and Big Red stopped playing in the regular season, then Caravana resigned following the 2005 season to become the lacrosse coach at Woodberry Forest School in Orange.

In 2007, Roanoke began playing its games at Kerr Stadium, a synthetic surface located at the site of the old practice field.

"See, if [Caravana] had played here in 1997, this could have happened then and the outcome might have been different today," Roanoke coach Bill Pilat said wryly.

Maybe so, but Denison (14-2) was the better team Saturday. The Big Red were coming off a 12-2 win over Ohio Wesleyan in Wednesday's first round and Denison was giving up 5.67 goals per game, which ranked second in Division III.

Roanoke (17-2) entered play Saturday with 19.44 goals per game, good for first in Division III, and had not scored fewer than 14 goals in a game all season.

Roanoke's lone loss before Saturday had come last Sunday in the ODAC championship game, 15-14, in overtime.

Denison held Roanoke scoreless during the first quarter and increased its lead to 4-0 with 42 seconds elapsed in the second quarter, when a Maroons defender checked Dan Maude's stick and the ball popped into an unattended Roanoke goal.

"To go 17-0 in the regular season, you need a lot of luck," Pilat said. "Today, we had no luck. We hit three pipes and even checked a ball into our own goal."

Virtually all of the statistics were even. Both teams took 46 shots; both goalies had 14 saves, Denison committed eight more turnovers than the Maroons and Roanoke won three more faceoffs than the Big Red.

"We shot the ball well and took good shots," Caravana observed.

Denison passed the ball crisply and found open cutters. The Big Red was patient, as opposed to the Maroons, who couldn't wait to unload shots, few of them screened.

"To be honest with you, we're basically impatient every game," admitted senior midfielder Chas Carlson, who finished with a team-high five points on three goals and two assists. "That's how we put up all those points. We did everything we could to play our game, but they took us out of our game."

Caravana, a former Virginia lacrosse star, left Woodberry Forest in 2007 to take over a start-up program at Otterbein (Ohio) College. He had a change of heart when the Denison job came open and former players persuaded him to give it another try.

"I guess I didn't burn too many bridges," he said.

Caravana was 0-5 against Roanoke between 1991-95 but he took the Big Red to the NCAA tourney seven times in an eight-year span between 1994-2001.

Pilat knew what kind of challenge he faced when he travelled to Ohio and saw the Denison-OWU game on Wednesday. The Maroons, who had been ranked No. 1 in the country prior to their loss Sunday, received a first-round bye that did not necessarily benefit them.

It was little consolation for Pilat when he was reminded that Roanoke had set a school record for victories in a season.

"I'll remember it as the best record ever," he said, "but we left some things on the table that we wanted to get done."

Denison 3 5 3 3 -- 14

Roanoke College 0 2 3 2 -- 7

Scoring -- Denison: Goals, Jones 4, Burton 4, Maude 3, Smith, Couture, Gulyas. Assists, Smith 3, Hall 2, Bliss, Hardt, Jones. Roanoke: Goals, Carlson 3, March, Foley, Quinton. Assists, Carlson 2, Keating, March.

Shots -- 46-46. Ground balls -- 44-33, Roanoke. Faceoffs -- Roanoke 14-of-25, Denison 11 of 25. Clears -- Denison 22 of 28, Roanoke 16 of 28. Saves -- 14-14. Turnovers -- Denison 29, Roanoke 21.