OVERTURE
Officially, Sunday’s NCAA Tournament Women’s Lacrosse game between the Maryland Terrapins and the visiting UMass Minutewomen was a second round game. However, as the top seeded team, Maryland had earned a first round bye and would be playing their first game since losing a week ago Friday in the Big Ten Tournament semifinal to Ohio State.
Perhaps because I’ve been covering too much softball lately, when I watched UMass beat Jacksonville Friday to play their way into Sunday’s second round, I thought, “Maryland will run rule either of these teams” meaning I believed the Terps would win by at least 8 but was uncertain whether they’d keep the pedal to the metal enough to get the 10 goal running clock of women’s lacrosse. They did. Overcoming a bit of a rough start, Maryland cruised to a 19-8 win.
ACT ONE
Perhaps there were some nerves. Maybe there was a bit of rust. Possibly UMass started the game with the devil may care abandon and energy of an underdog playing with nothing to lose. Most likely it was a combination of the three. Whatever the cause, in the hectic and dynamic opening minutes of the game, the Minutewomen held their own with the Terps on the draw and crisply ran their offense to take a 3-2 lead when Erica Eipp, UMass’ second leading goal scorer, registered the second of her four goals with 26:19 to play in the opening half. Their next goal came with 5:59 to play.
One needn’t have either perfect vision or perfect hindsight to know that a 20:20 scoring drought against a team with Maryland’s offensive firepower is a recipe for disaster. The Terps strung together six goals over that span to take an 8-3 lead and control of the game.
Showing great balance, six different players scored those first eight goals with two coming from freshman sensation Megan Whittle who finished with four goals placing her among the most prolific freshmen in Maryland history. The Terps’ freshman record is held by Kari-Ellen Johnson who scored 77 in her rookie campaign. Kelly McPartland scored on a pair of free position shots while Brooke Griffin, Mattie Meredith, Erin Collins and Taylor Cummings each added one.
Six of those eight goals also came off free position attempts. UMass finished the half with 23 fouls. Head coach Angela McMahon said, “A lot of the fouls came when we were getting beat by one step and allowing them to get middle and our fouls were kind of those desperation attempts – last ditch efforts to recover.”
Freshman Taylor Hensh scored her ninth goal of the season and the Terps scored twice in the last minute and a half with Whittle and McPartland each completing first half hat tricks. Maryland led 11-6 at the break. The Terps also had one sided advantages on ground balls (7-2), draw controls (13-4) and shots 22-6.
INTERMISSION
Although Maryland coach Cathy Reese didn’t acknowledge as specific focus on draw controls or ground balls in the practices leading up to Sunday’s game, stressing coming together as a team and playing to each other’s strengths, here are some telling comparisons: In the 11-10 loss to Ohio State, Maryland had a 12-10 edge in draw controls but a 9-13 deficit in ground balls. In the 19-8 win Sunday, draw controls favored Maryland 22-7 and the Terps gobbled up 14 ground balls to the Minutewomen’s eight. McMahon saw it a little differently, “The difference in some of those ground balls was that they were going in threes and fours so it was three or four of them against one of us.”
ACT TWO
If the teams were dynamic and efficient for the game’s opening ten minutes, they were equally impotent and ineffective for the first seven or eight minutes of the second. Admittedly, both goalies – Alex Fitzpatrick for Maryland and Rachel Vallarelli for UMass contributed to that with Vallarelli picking up three of her 11 saves and Fitzpatrick adding a save of her own on a free position shot and intercepting a Minutewomen pass.
Eipp got Massachusetts on the board first scoring with 22:28 to play in the game. That shook Maryland out of their doldrums and you should never disturb a sleeping Terrapin. Five goals came in rapid fire succession. First Cummings followed by a pair of Zoe Stukenberg goals, then Cummings again and finally Whittle. Maryland may have needed less time to score those five goals – 4:53 seconds – than I needed to type this paragraph.
Whittle’s score put Maryland up 16-6 and started that running clock I wrote about above. Eipp’s final goal briefly brought the deficit back to single digits but McPartland scored on the Terapins next possession joining Whittle as a four goal scorer and, after Fitzpatrick notched her third save of the game, Stukenberg joined Cummings as the fourth Terps with a hat trick.
After Eileen McDonald scored on a free position for UMass, Mattie Meredith closed the scoring with her second of the game sealing the 19-8 Terrapins win.
Next up for the Terps is a rematch with Big Ten foe Northwestern. The Wildcats notched a 16-11 win over Notre Dame taking down their second straight ACC opponent. Penn State eliminated another ACC squad with a 13-11 win over Virginia in Charlottesville.
A fourth ACC squad, Boston College, also went down at the hands of Loyola (MD) coached by Jen Adams one of the greatest players ever to don a Maryland uniform. Adams’ Greyhounds certainly live up to their team nickname adding 19 goals against the Eagles to the 21 they scored in their opening round win over Bryant.
Three of the four B1G squads have advanced to the quarterfinals. The ACC also has three teams in the final eight but the conference started with seven teams in the 26 team field. Loyola and Princeton round out the quarterfinals.
Northwestern will be making their first trip to College Park since 2006 when they defeated a Cindy Timchal led Maryland squad in the season opener. Game time is set for noon on Sunday May 17th.
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