The players on the Maryland men’s lacrosse tribe likely have a word to describe John Tillman. That word is coach.
The members of my tribe also have a word to describe John Tillman.
That word is mensch. The word has become common enough that the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines it:
Mensch:
a person of integrity and honor
The tribe of Maryland lacrosse fans should also have a word to describe John Tillman.
That word is: winner
Yes, winner.
I understand the pedigree of the University of Maryland lacrosse program. I understand that lacrosse is the official team sport of the state of Maryland. I understand and share the frustration and disappointment the fans feel when a team with the longest streak of NCAA Tournament appearances, a team that has reached championship weekend four times in the last five years and has reached the championship game in three of those four years once again came up short of ending a now 41st year since this historic program has claimed a national championship. But still, I say, yes, John Tillman is a winner.
Tillman’s five year record at Maryland is 63-23. That is winning percentage of .731. Maryland has fared nearly as well in the NCAA Tournament winning 11 and losing 5 – a .687 percentage.
With the exception of the first round loss to Cornell in 2013 Maryland has exceeded its seed in every season with Tillman at the helm. In 2011 and 2012, he led unseeded Maryland teams to the title game. His third appearance this year came with a sixth seed. In 2014, Maryland reached the semifinals as a seventh seed. So, if seeding is an indicator, all of those Terrapins teams were Final Four interlopers.
Tillman’s place at Maryland
At Maryland, we as fans celebrate, and rightly so, the accomplishments of many of the university’s teams and their coaches.
Take Brenda Frese. Yes, she has led the women’s basketball team to its only national championship, but in 13 years as the head coach, Brenda Frese has one fewer Final Four appearance than John Tillman and she went nearly a decade between her team’s first and second Final Four.
Or Sasho Cirovski. He, too, has led Maryland to national titles. In the last five years, despite having a remarkable .780 winning percentage, Maryland’s men’s soccer team has reached one championship game and one semifinal. They have not won a national championship in that time.
Only field hockey coach Missy Meharg, who has two titles and two other final four appearances and women’s lacrosse coach Cathy Reese who can claim five straight Final Four trips and two titles can point to more success in the NCAA Tournament than John Tillman.
And yet, throughout the blogosphere, I continually see people complaining about Tillman’s “inability to bring home the title.” I say, “Enough!” His record alone should suffice for him to claim the titles of coach, mensch, and winner. But the record alone is not what makes him this.
Some words from the coach
At times throughout the season, I have poked fun at Coach Tillman’s tendency to give very long answers to fairly simple questions – answers that can be reduced to a sentence or two. But the coach took the most recent loss to heart and this time, I will let his words speak for themselves.
Here’s his opening statement after Monday’s loss:
“First, I’d like to say congratulations to Denver University and Coach Tierney Just a tremendous season in a lot of places, start to finish, the No. 1 team in the country.
“Certainly a worthy champion. Played well all year and played very, very well today, very clean game. Every aspect of play they were excellent. Middle of the field, offense, defense, in the goal, they were tremendous.
And it obviously speaks to the players they have, but also the coaching staff. So they did an excellent job, and obviously a shout out to the city of Philadelphia and Lincoln Financial Field. Just an amazing experience over the last four days with our players, something that they’ll always remember. First class all the way.
“Obviously, it was not the end that we wanted. I thought Denver outplayed us in a lot of facets. Yet that wasn’t due to the effort. I’m really proud of this group. I’m more proud of this group than any group I’ve ever been a part of.
“If you’re an alum or you’re from the state of Maryland, I don’t know how you couldn’t be proud of just the grit, the heart, the resolve these guys showed all year. Selfishly for me they took me on a journey, an amazing one, from August to now, one that I’ll never forget. And although we had some ups and downs, they got us on the cusp of obviously winning a national championship. But more importantly, just did things the right way, as a group that everybody can be proud of on and off the field.
“So it’s hard to say goodbye. Right now we’re trying to focus on just maximizing and making the most of the time we have together. Because we know that the end is near. And that’s probably the hardest thing for all of us, is just realizing that we’re not going to be able to go out and practice anymore and we’re not going to have many moments together.
“So tough locker room in there, but I love those guys. I’m proud of them, and they made everybody around here proud.”
Some have questioned his offensive acumen and creativity. Pay attention to his answer when he was asked if anything in Denver’s defensive game plan surprised him:
“No, it’s a quick turnaround. You can change the poles. You can maybe change your sliding patterns, things like that. But it’s pretty much what we expected. The downside of losing this game, you get Saturday night, by the time you get back it’s 8:00 and you’re trying to get organized. And you’re trying to get as good a feel as you can.
“I thought Coach Reppert did a great job of just breaking down personnel, schemes, things that we thought we were going to see, and it’s what we saw today, but I thought they just executed well. We had a tough time getting leverage. We got stagnant off the ball. We weren’t cutting to the pipes and moving inside as much as we could have. All that being said, we had some looks and we just got stubborn a little bit, and that’s probably the best word with our shooting.
“I want to make sure we give credit to Ryan LaPlante. He played great. But he was good high and we kept talking about trying to change our levels, and it’s easier said than done sometimes
because you get the ball and sometimes you fall back on your instincts. It got a little frustrating on the sideline because we kept saying change your levels, change it up, use the ground, maybe shoot off his knees or hips and we kept going back to it.
“So he kept staying on it. And sometimes that makes it a little bit easier for the goalie. But give the goalie his due. He played great. And I think if we had hit a couple of those and closed the gap maybe we could have gotten some momentum.”
The next question concerned momentum and Denver capturing an early lead. His answer:
“No, we’ve been there before. We scored four goals in 4:22 at the end of the Ohio State game, and if we’d got one more possession we might have been able to win it in regulation. We’ve been down that road before. Obviously I didn’t do a very good job of getting them ready mentally and that’s on me.
“I told the kids that, when we win it’s theirs. When we lose, obviously I haven’t done certain things right. And candidly, when you get here, just feel like you’re trying to do everything you can to get your kids in the right spot to win, and I gotta do a better job of evaluating how we spend the time after Saturday night’s game until now so we can put them in a better chance of being successful.”
I’ve seen comments about shortcomings in recruiting particularly speed on offense and depth. Somehow, fans seem to think the coach and his staff are unaware of this. The answers to the next two questions belie that notion. First he talked about needing more offense and his answer dealt not only with the game against Denver but the entire season.
“We kind of knew our team better than anybody. And certainly when you’re going through the year, you can look at what you have and you build your team and your playing style based on what you have. Certainly we took some hits on our style of play, but we kind of looked at our group, and we didn’t necessarily have a group that we could get the ball and immediately had some dynamic, really fast guy that could put pressure on the other team.
We certainly like our attackmen – Jay Carlson is a really good finisher, and Matt Rambo is a really good player. We like Dylan Maltz and Colin Heacock, but if you have polls on those guys you are comfortable. When you see a team like Carolina with Sankey and Bitter, I’m not sure you ever feel comfortable. So we weren’t the fastest team. That’s just kind of who we were. Looking at the way we were going to be successful. We were going to have to really hang our hat on defense, good goalie play, facing off. And today we pushed the ball a couple times in transition, trying to get out. And we love to just roll the ball out and get up and down. We’re not built that way. We don’t have those parts.
“So are you going to just play that way for the sake of doing it or do you look and go what can we do to give these kids the best chance to be successful. And it was a little bit more opportunistic, efficient, gritty, ground balls and those types of things. And we felt like if we played good defense people wouldn’t pull away from us, and then we just had the scheme, maybe use picks and shoot smart.
Again, I just didn’t do a good enough job getting it done for the kids. That’s probably the hardest thing for me because these kids made so many sacrifices and I just didn’t get them there.”
Then he talked about what he learned and what he will take away from the weekend into next season:
“Similar takeaway from last year. We’ve been really trying to play more uptempo and play more people. And we kind of felt like we were putting ourselves in the position to have more depth. And then we have some folks leave the program. We have Timmy Rotanz, that played extensively last year and he gets hurt. And Lucas Gradinger, who has been very promising, he gets hurt. Nick Manis, he gets hurt as well. And all of a sudden we had to shuffle the deck a little bit more and some guys we thought we could go to we couldn’t. So that shrinks your bench a little bit, and for us having that week it was really big. Charlie got hurt. He got hurt again today.
“And we just don’t have the depth that we need and obviously I need to do a better job bringing that depth in.”
Finally, someone asked Tillman what he said to his team in the locker room. Here’s his answer:
“Told them I loved them. I thanked them for the amazing experience that all of us had, the journey we went on. I think that people talk about winning a championship and that’s certainly one of our goals. We know how much it would mean to our school, our state, our alums, and I’m determined to just bust our hump to try to get it for them. And I wanted it so bad for those kids because, Matt said it, we didn’t have a team of superstars; we had a lot of kids who bought in and sold out. And that’s what hurts.
“But it’s hard to say goodbye, because the kids did so much right, they did it the right way. And that’s the most important thing for me. If we’re going to be successful and win a championship we’ve got to do it the right way, have good culture, have kids that go to class, do community service, that make a difference.
“And this group was willing to do that. And even the guys who weren’t going to play on Saturday they were awesome on scout team. They were great with kids with autographs. They were on time. They were diligent. So I feel like the culture is pretty good. And I think the seniors left a legacy here and a standard that hopefully the other guys can follow.
“And obviously I gotta go back to work and start looking at ways we can get it right on the field. I know we’ve got good people and good kids. And I think, I know, I’m proud of them and I hope all the Maryland fans and alums are and the school is, because they play hard for Maryland. They play hard for more than just themselves, and I think those are the takeaways that you want your kids to have. It’s not about you. It’s about the team. It’s about something bigger than yourself and to make those sacrifices I always think it comes around to you, and that’s a great way to live your life.”
And those, my friends, are the words of a coach, a winner, and most of all, a mensch.
freddy from boca
one of these days we’re going to kick down the door and walk on through.
i’d like to see better size and speed. looked like denver was a much bigger team. in a sport that you’ll find a lot of one on one play you prefer a skilled player with size to overpower and speed to get by. what i’m saying is bring me the next frank urzo or jimmy brown.
i’m not asking much. somewhere that 6-2 6-3 kid with 4.4 speed and handles the stick that way that guy on ed sullivan handled the tall poles and spinning plates is out there.
watch we get the sullivan act’s great grand child. good for halftime shows
· 11/12/2019
Todd
Anyone who brings Ed Sullivan into the comments has my respect.
· 11/12/2019