The Terrapin men’s lacrosse team came into its final regular-season game knowing exactly what it wanted to do: keep the momentum of the ACC tournament championship and head into the NCAA tournament with “all cylinders firing,” according to Brendan Healy.
He wasn’t kidding.
Sixteen Terps scored, including four career firsts. Coach Dave Cottle emptied his bench early, but even that didn’t slow down the Terp offense.
Every player who made the Saturday trip to Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia got into the game, and the No. 6 Terps routed unranked Penn, 21-6.
The 21 goals are the most since 1998, against Navy.
“We wanted to win the game. We wanted to have some momentum, and we wanted to get some guys in,” Cottle said. “It’s just a shame we didn’t have a couple of these games in February and March. Kids enjoy scoring. They put an awful lot of work towards it and it’s nice to see them score.”
The win was enough to garner a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament with a first-round game against No. 14 Penn State. The Terps’ four-game winning streak is their longest of the season and couldn’t have come at a better time, coming off their worst losing skid since 1988 and heading into the tournament.
“You hope you learn how to win. You don’t get arrogant,” Cottle said. “You learn how to win and prepare to win. That’s the question we’ll find out about ourselves, whether winning brings arrogance or a self inner confidence that gives you the ability to move on and get better.”
Junior attackman Joe Walters did not start for the first time in his career. Before the start of the game, Cottle said Walters’ absence from the starting line was a “coach’s decision.”
“We wanted to start a senior, David Matz,” Cottle said. “He hadn’t played much, so I just decided to start David for [Walters]. That’s the only reason.”
In the Terps’ first game against an opponent that wasn’t ranked at any time this season, Walters’ absence didn’t matter.
No Terp scored more than two goals, but five players accomplished that mark. By the end, seldom heard names such as Chris Feifs, Brent Hargest, Jay Feeley, Matt Askionoff and Andrew Urquhart were flashing on the scoreboard.
“We have great starters. But coach always said our 10-20, 20-30, 30-40 guys are equal or above anyone else’s in the game,” Urquhart said after scoring his first career goal. “Our starters are great, but everyone else is also good.”
The Terps (9-5) shot a torrid 54 percent from the field, going 21 of 39. Penn (2-11) struggled to find any decent goaltending or defensive play, using four different netminders.
When asked if the stellar shooting — which was 21 percent higher than the Terps’ average entering the game — was a sign of things to come, Cottle said he hopes so.
“I thought our faceoff guy was getting better, our goalie is getting better and if we just shoot a little better it will really help us,” Cottle said.
The Terps cashed in on all four of their extra-man opportunities, and the Quakers failed on all seven of theirs.
The Terps also used four different faceoff men — not including freshman Will Dalton, who dominated in the ACC tournament — to control 19 of 29 draws. Junior faceoff specialist David Tamberrino won 12 of 20.
“We thought if we won a lot of faceoffs we would have a chance to score a lot of goals,” Cottle said. “I thought [Tamberrino] would be the guy that would have success and he had success so we just stuck with him.”
Any worries that the Terps would come out flat in a game that had far less meaning than a week ago were silenced early on.
Junior midfielder Bill McGlone stuck in the game’s first goal only two minutes, 58 seconds in and Matz made well on his start, notching the Terps’ second goal less than a minute later. Brendan and Ian Healy cashed in on the Terps’ next two scores before Penn finally found the net on their first shot of the game — with only five minutes left in the first quarter.
The Terps never wavered down the stretch, scoring the game’s final eight goals after Penn tallied two straight to bring the score to 13-6.
