As I write this post five days remain until the official end of the University of Maryland’s first full year as a participant in Big Ten athletics. In the first of a series I plan to look back at how the Terps performed in their new home but I will begin with an apology.
Maryland fields teams in 19 sports – 8 men’s teams and 11 women’s teams. I follow 13 of those teams as a fan or reporter. Thus, in this recap I will make little or no mention of six sports – men’s golf, men’s track and field, women’s cross country, women’s golf, women’s tennis, and women’s track and field. To the athletes and coaches of those teams I apologize for my neglect.
In this series, I will look chronologically at the performance of each of the remaining 13 teams dividing the report into the three NCAA seasons – fall sports, winter sports and spring sports. With that, let’s begin.
Fall Sports
Women’s Soccer
Faced with an improbable number of injuries all over the field, the women’s soccer team didn’t have the success they and the media anticipated. The Terps opened the season with a trip to the west coast and faced the defending national champion UCLA Bruins in the season opener. Although they lost 3-1, it wasn’t pretty. Maryland didn’t manage a single shot and, had it not been for a nearly unconscious 10 save effort from goalkeeper Rachelle Beanlands, well, you can only imagine.
Two days later the Terps tooled into Malibu where they dropped a 1-0 decision to the Pepperdine Waves. Two games. Two losses. Two shutouts. Already a pattern had emerged. In the 20th minute of that game, Cory Ryan had a clean look at the goal but, in a shot that would become emblematic of Maryland’s season, hit the crossbar.
The Terps upset Rutgers 2-0 to open the B1G season and, after a 1-0 win at Iowa, stood at 2-1-1 in conference play and looked poised to make some noise. However, they dropped their next game 4-3 in overtime at Nebraska in one of only two games in the season in which they would score more than two goals.
In fact, after bouncing back from that loss with a 2-1 win at home over Purdue, the Terrapins scored a total of two goals over the season’s final seven games. Maryland finished 5-7-6 and 3-5-5 in the conference and did not finish in the top eight failing to qualify for the B1G Tournament.
Field Hockey
The field hockey team entered the season as the number one team in the nation. After winning their first two games at a neutral site, they lost the home opener to rival and second ranked North Carolina and fell out of the top spot in the polls.
They won three straight but were shocked by Northwestern in Evanston in their first ever B1G conference game. The loss seemed to be something of a wake-up call as they went on a tear winning 13 straight games eventually capturing the B1G Championship in a 4-1 win over Iowa.
They traveled to Ann Arbor for the first Big Ten Tournament beating Ohio State and Penn State and reaching the final where Northwestern again had their number pulling off a 3-1 upset.
Still, the deck seemed stacked in Maryland’s favor as the Terps number two seed meant they would host the first two games of the NCAA Tournament and College Park was the host school for the Final Four. But it was a season of “not meant to be.” Albany upset the Terps 2-1 in the quarterfinals and, though making their 20th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, Maryland saw an end to their string of six straight Final Fours.
Football
The cornerstone sport of every power five conference school faced a daunting challenge in head coach Randy Edsall’s fourth season. After seeing the program plunge from 9-4 and an appearance in the Military Bowl in the season prior to his arrival to 2-10 in his first season, and somehow squeezing four wins while suffering through the quarterback year of living dangerously, the Terps saw a return to the Military Bowl in the season preceding their move to the Big Ten.
So, the big question hanging over the program was: How would the Terps fare against the more physical style of play and football mania that supposedly typified their new conference? I think they answered with a resounding shrug. Why?
Surprising losses dotted the conference including one by eventual national champion, Ohio State. And therein lies the rub. Or shall I say the rub part one. The B1G produced the national champion but was a singularly unimpressive 49-20 against non-conference FBS opponents.
In the rub part two, Maryland picked up road wins at Syracuse, Indiana, Michigan and Penn State and didn’t lose two consecutive games until losing a 35-10 lead over Rutgers in the regular season finale and then being effectively obliterated by Stanford in the Emerald Bowl. So why the rub? Well, while wins at Penn State and Michigan are somewhat impressive under any circumstances, the combined 5-11 conference record of the two teams certainly takes some of the sheen of the accomplishment.
The rub part three is Maryland’s 4-4 conference record. That final mark certainly equaled the more optimistic expectations for the Terps’ initial B1G season. Had they held on to the lead over Rutgers, the season would have looked far more successful. On the other side of the coin, it was a bit of a down year for the conference as a whole and when they faced the top teams – Ohio State, Michigan State and Wisconsin – they lost by a combined 141-46 evidence that they were certainly not fully ready for the B1G time.
Still, for the first time in Randy Edsall’s tenure as the head coach at Maryland, the Terps can point to finishing back to back seasons with winning records. And, for the first time in the Edsall era, Maryland can boast consecutive bowl appearances.
Men’s Soccer
If I had to sum up the season for the Maryland men’s soccer team in one word, that would be Cyclone both in the sense of the famous Coney Island roller coaster and in more literal sense of a powerful storm. As was the case for many of the fall sports teams, the season got off to a less than auspicious start. After three games, the Terps were 1-1-1. After six games, they had a 1-3-2 record and had lost their Big Ten opener at home to Michigan State.
The Terps looked to have righted the ship when they beat Dayton and Wisconsin but they then dropped a 1-0 game at home to Georgetown and followed that with a 3-2 overtime loss at Northwestern that led to a one game suspension for head coach Sasho Cirovski. Cirovski’s explosion triggered a ramp of the Terrapins’ soccer cyclone to a Category 5 storm.
Following the loss at Northwestern, Maryland powered through the remainder of the regular season schedule by winning eight straight games. The finished the regular season 10-5-3 and 5-2-1 in the B1G enough to claim the conference title.
Their hot play continued into the Big Ten Tournament as they defeated Rutgers, Michigan State on penalty kicks, and Indiana to become the first Maryland team to claim both the B1G conference and tournament championships. When the NCAA Tournament arrived, Cyclone Terrapins had dwindled to a tropical depression and the Terps fell to my alma mater, UMBC, suffering a 1-0 defeat at the paws of the Retrievers in the second round.
Volleyball
Headed into the season, first year head coach Steve Aird expected the Terps to struggle. He inherited a dispirited squad transitioning from the ACC – an average volleyball conference – to the B1G – one of the two best conferences in the NCAA.
Despite winning their first six matches, the Terps struggled a bit in the early going dropping sets to teams with less talent. Maryland’s razor thin margin of error essentially vanished when senior middle blocker Adreene Elliott was lost for the season in a Tournament at Appalachian State.
Aird hadn’t expected great success had his team been healthy all season. Down one of his two best players, the season unfolded as one might have expected – at least in terms of wins and losses. Maryland finished 10-21 overall and 3-17 in conference play. As strange as this may sound, the season did have something of a positive arc.
The Terps swept fellow Big Ten newcomer Rutgers and, over the season’s final five matches, they won a set at 11th ranked Nebraska, pushed Iowa and Minnesota to five sets and ended the season by beating Northwestern also in five sets.
In all, the Terps couldn’t have asked for a much more propitious start to their first year in the Big Ten. The football team fared better than many expected or predicted. Field hockey and men’s soccer won conference championships and men’s soccer added the Big Ten Tournament title to its trophy shelf as well. In three short months, Maryland teams had taken the field and immediately begun to dispel worries that the Terps would struggle to compete in their new conference home.
In part two, I’ll take a look a the men’s basketball season and follow that up with a look at the women’s basketball team’s run to the Final Four. I’ll then wrap up the winter sports with a look at wrestling and gymnastics before moving on to the spring season.
No comments have been posted yet, be the first!
Post a comment by filling out the form below.
