Midfielder Drew Snider and the Terps are looking to capture their second straight ACC title.

When John Tillman sat down to watch the Duke-Virginia men’s lacrosse game on TV last Friday, no one would’ve blamed him for doing a double take. Wait, the second-year Terps coach might’ve thought, are these really the same Blue Devils we played last month?

Unfortunately for the No. 4 seed Terrapins men’s lacrosse team, which will face No. 1 seed Duke tonight in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament, it isn’t quite the same squad it beat, 10-7, on March 3.

Less than six weeks after that loss at Byrd Stadium, the Blue Devils dominated the then-top-ranked Cavaliers en route to a 13-5 victory before 7,234 at Klöckner Stadium. It was a perplexing turn of events, considering the Terps fell to Virginia, 12-8, just 20 days earlier in College Park.

“It felt like [Duke was] different,” Tillman said. “They were really fast, they looked like they were playing at a higher level.”

And yet, Tillman wasn’t shocked. After all, this was Duke – a team known for starting seasons slow and ending them strong, a team built on evolving week to week.

Over the past three years, the Blue Devils have gone a combined 8-7 in their first five games. Yet they reached the NCAA Semifinals twice in that span, and won it all in 2010.

This season, they’ve followed that same trajectory. After several media outlets picked Duke to finish in the top three nationally this year, the Blue Devils stumbled to a 3-3 start. Since then, they’ve rattled off eight consecutive wins – three against teams currently ranked in Inside Lacrosse’s top 15 – and are arguably the hottest team in the sport.

“I think [Duke] coach [John] Danowski has a good formula,” midfielder Drew Snider said. “They adapt really well. I think that’s the biggest thing. If something’s not really working the way they need it to, they put it on the drawing board, make some changes and it’s been really successful.”

Tillman isn’t exactly one for complacency, either. He understands that for the inexperienced Terps to reach Sunday’s final, they’ll need to be a fluid product. He realizes that Danowski and his staff have done their homework, and the Terps must tweak their approach to stay competitive against their longtime rival.

And perhaps just as importantly, Tillman knows the adjustments can’t stop when his team boards its bus for Charlottesville, Va. They’ll need to extend well into the game.

“Neither of us really know what to expect,” Tillman said. “So we’re going to have to, after like the first couple possessions, at least defensively, go, ‘OK, this is what they’re doing now.’ We’ll need to make some adjustments on the fly and be prepared for that.”

It’s a strategy the Terps (7-3, 1-2 ACC) have appeared to master against Duke (11-3, 2-1) in recent years.

Although the Blue Devils consistently improve throughout the season, the Terps always seem to have an answer for them. While Duke is 26-2 against Virginia and North Carolina since 2005, it’s just 5-7 against the Terps during that same span.

“I think when you see other teams raising their level of play, you think to yourself, OK, we’ve got to continue to raise our level of play,” said senior attackman Joe Cummings, who is 5-1 against the Blue Devils in his career. “You see other teams getting better, and you know that you’ve got to get better.”

And the Terps have. They may not be riding an eight-game winning streak, but they’ve played their best lacrosse of late. After dropping back-to-back games for the first time in two years last month, they’ve notched convincing victories over Navy and No. 7 Johns Hopkins.

So as Tillman watched Duke rout the then-No. 1 team in the country last week, he wasn’t concerned. He knew that if his team does what it has to this afternoon, it’ll have a shot at its second straight ACC title.

“Jeez, when you’re really locked in, anybody can beat anybody,” Tillman said. “If we play well, why can’t we win that game?”

letourneau@umdbk.com