DURHAM, N.C. – Early in the fourth quarter of yesterday’s ACC Championship, Ryan Young scurried back and forth along the Duke crease, looking to get open in the field’s most contested area.
After running off a pick, the Terrapin men’s lacrosse attackman called for the ball. Midfielder John Haus, dodging behind Duke’s cage, found him with a pinpoint pass that Young finished with a quick-stick goal over Blue Devil goalkeeper Dan Wirgrizer’s shoulder.
Young emphatically pumped his fist in the air and celebrated with Haus as the Terp faithful who had made the five-hour trip to watch them began to chant “Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.”
The goal — the Terps’ 10th — ended up as the game-winner in an 11-9 victory against top-seeded Duke before 4,328 at Koskinen Stadium. The title marked the team’s first ACC Championship since 2005 and fourth since the league adopted a postseason tournament to crown its champion in 1989.
It also proved a gripping ending to the No. 6 Terps’ (10-3) hectic and emotional week. After losing a four-year fight with pancreatic cancer, Young’s mother, Maria, died last Sunday, exactly a week before the Terps’ title game.
“I think Maria Young was an unbelievable inspiration for all of us,” coach John Tillman said. “When I met her last summer, she said, ‘One, I want my son to graduate, so make sure you kick his butt and make sure he does what he’s supposed to do. And two, make sure he wins a championship.’ … We told the guys, ‘We can’t let her down.'”
“Obviously, last week with our overtime loss to Hopkins, we were all down. And then Ryan Young loses his mom, it puts things back into perspective,” midfielder Curtis Holmes added. “There are so many more things that are bigger than just a lacrosse game. We used that all week as motivation — playing for Ryan, playing for his family, playing for his mom.”
With Maria in their minds, the Terps topped North Carolina, 7-6, in the semifinals Friday and snapped No. 7 Duke’s (11-5) 17-game home winning streak yesterday with a definitive, two-goal victory to earn the title of ACC champion in Tillman’s first season at the helm.
“It’s a great win for all of them against a really good team,” Tillman said. “We knew coming down here, to win two games would be really tough. Everybody’s good, and to beat Duke on their home field as the No. 1 seed — a team that had beaten us before — we knew we had our hands full.”
Attackman Grant Catalino, who scored the game-winning goal against the No. 10 Tar Heels on Friday, paced the Terps on offense with three goals and was named the tournament’s most valuable player, while attackman Owen Blye dished out two assists and Young added two assists to his game-winning goal.
But what made the difference in yesterday’s game was the Terps’ play at the faceoff X from Holmes, who won 75 percent of the draws against the Blue Devils. His 18 faceoff wins gave the Terps ample opportunities on offense while limiting a dangerous Duke team’s possessions.
Four players lined up against Holmes yesterday, but it hardly mattered. The Blue Devil with the most success — long pole C.J. Costabile — won only four of the 13 draws he took.
“They had a lot of possession,” Duke coach John Danowski said. “We played a lot of defense, probably a little bit too much.”
Even though the Terps left with the victory, it was Duke that dominated in the game’s early going. The Blue Devils scored the game’s first two goals and owned a 5-2 lead after the first quarter.
But a three-goal run in the second frame tied the game at six, and the Terp offense slowly began to click. After trading goals with Duke and tying the score at eight, an extra-man goal from attackman Travis Reed gave the Terps the lead for good with more than 18 minutes left to play. Then Young scored his clincher off Haus’ feed from behind the goal.
“Getting that goal just gave a little jumpstart to finish the game for us,” Young said. “John Haus made a ridiculous play and got me the ball. We took it from there and got the ‘W.'”
With the win, Tillman became the third first-year coach to win an ACC Championship, and the Terps became the first team since Virginia in 2006 to sweep the men’s and women’s titles. Just hours before in Cary, N.C., the Terp women’s lacrosse team defeated North Carolina to claim its eighth conference crown.
But above all else, yesterday’s triumph helped the Terps move on from a devastating week scarred by the sobering loss of a loved one.
“This week, obviously everyone knows it’s been extremely tough for me and my family, and my team, too,” Young said. “But those guys downstairs [in the locker room], they’re going crazy. They’re my family. They’re my brothers. They’re the easiest people to lean on in a time like this. Nothing feels better than coming out with a win like that and coming out as ACC champions.”
TERP NOTE: Catalino was named the tournament’s most valuable player, while Brett Schmidt, Young, Cooper, Holmes and midfielder Dan Burns also earned spots on the All-ACC Tournament team.
jengelke@umdbk.com
