The Maryland field hockey team earned the No. 2 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament Sunday night and will host the NCAA First and Second Rounds Saturday and Sunday at the Field Hockey & Lacrosse Complex.
The Terrapins (17-4) will play either Monmouth (17-2) or Massachusetts (13-7) Saturday at 11:30 a.m. Monmouth and Massachusetts will meet in a play-in game Wednesday at Monmouth. North Carolina (17-5) will take on Stanford (13-6) Saturday at 2 p.m. Saturday’s winners will advance to play Sunday in the NCAA Second Round.
For the full NCAA bracket, click here. Parking and ticket information will be available on umterps.com Monday.
This marks Maryland’s 28th NCAA Tourmament appearance and 22nd straight, which is the longest active streak in the nation. Maryland is 56-20 (.737) in the NCAA Tournament, the most wins of any school in Tournament history.
In the 29 years under head coach Missy Meharg, the Terrapins have made 27 NCAA Tournament appearances. She’s helped the Terps to eight NCAA championships, including seven as head coach, and 16 Final Fours.
The Terrapins fell to No. 6 Penn State, 2-1, Sunday in the Big Ten Championship game at the Field Hockey & Lacrosse Complex. The Terrapins led at half, but a second half surge by the Nittany Lions (17-2) was the difference.
Welma Luus was named Big Ten Player of the Year and Grace Balsdon was named Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year the league announced Wednesday.
Both were named to the All-Big Ten First Team, as voted by the league’s nine head coaches. Junior Lein Holsboer was voted to the All-Big Ten Second Team. With Luus’ and Balsdon’s honors this year, 15 Terrapins in program history have earned 20 conference Player of the Year awards.
Todd
The NCAA seeding shows why the B1G Title game was more important to the team from Happy Valley than the Terps. Had MD won they would have likely been the top overall seed and been where Duke is now – still with a bye but playing the winner of American/Kent State rather than UMass/Monmouth.
With the win, PSU bumped up to the #4 seed and will potentially get a two home games before the Final Four. Had they lost, I think the 4 seed would have likely gone to UConn.
One side note, congrats are in order for former MD assistant Tjerk van Herwaarden who was on Missy’s staff for five of her national championships. He became head coach at Harvard five years ago and led the Crimson to a perfect 7-0 season in the Ivy League and their first NCAA tourney since 2004. Katie O’Donnell-Bam is an assistant on his staff.
· 11/12/2019