Maryland men’s lacrosse uses early scoring surge to cruise past Penn State, 16-9

In the Maryland men’s lacrosse team’s regular-season game against Penn State on April 10, coach John Tillman needed his group to stay calm.

So midway through the second quarter of the contest in State College, Pennsylvania, with the Terps in a four-goal hole, he asked his team what the score was. His players echoed “zero to zero.” They felt they could come back.

And they did, as midfielder Bryan Cole netted the game-winner with 43 seconds left in overtime. The win was the seventh in the team’s 11-game win streak it carried into the Big Ten Tournament semifinals Thursday evening, a rematch with the Nittany Lions.

With about seven minutes left in the first quarter at Homewood Field, Tillman, waving his hands in the middle of a huddle, again asked his team the score. This time, he needed his team to stay focused after opening the game on a 4-0 tear.

While the Terps settled in from celebrating to listen to Tillman and offensive coordinator J.L. Reppert during the break, their scoring surge on the field continued. Behind six unanswered goals to start the game, the Terps downed the No. 4-seed Nittany Lions, 16-9, in Baltimore.

With the victory, Maryland will play the winner of the second semifinal — No. 2-seed Rutgers versus No. 3-seed Johns Hopkins — for the chance to add the Big Ten Tournament trophy to their regular-season conference title.

“Don’t play the scoreboard. Get out and play the next play,” Tillman told his squad after Penn State called its first timeout. “We came out with a lot of energy and a lot of emotion, and we just didn’t want to kind of lose that edge,” he said.

Midfielder Connor Kelly, who recorded a hat trick in the match, dumped in a shot off a scrambling play less than two minutes into the contest to spark that momentum. Attackman Matt Rambo’s first of his team-leading five points, four of which he tallied in the first quarter, came 40 seconds later.

Penn State’s first possession came at the 11:30-mark in the period, but the team couldn’t muster a shot in the two minutes it held the ball. The Terps sideline screamed for the officials to call a stall warning. Defensive coordinator Kevin Conry clapped his hands, rotating between squatting, hunching and standing as his unit kept the Nittany Lions off balance.

Conry jumped and whirled his right arm in a circle when the backline forced a turnover. The rest of the Terps joined him as Maryland cleared to offense and midfielder Pat Young notched the first of his two scores.

After Rambo’s next tally, which left the Terps bounding into the huddle as Penn State coach Jeff Tambroni called for the break, attackmen Colin Heacock and Dylan Maltz each redirected feeds from the junior, who dished his passes from behind the cage.

At that point, Tambroni looked up at the scoreboard. His team had managed two possessions, while the Terps had scored six goals in nine minutes and 42 seconds.

“Going down 6-0 kind of set the tone for the game,” Tambroni said. “[We] had to really climb and push with a lot more urgency than we would have liked.”

That tempo helped the Nittany Lions string together a three-goal spurt, but Maryland responded with a score from Heacock. Then midfielder Lucas Gradinger and Kelly piled on points. Next, it was defender Bryce Young.

Young’s second score of the season came with less than five minutes left in the half. He and midfielder Tim Rotanz manned the wings on the preceding faceoff, and when Rotanz scooped possession, he dished the ball to Young to flip into the net. The duo and two other Terps leaped in unison for a four-player chest bump.

Penn State attackman Nick Aponte scored three of his four goals in final two periods as part of two different Nittany Lions runs, but Tillman’s team managed five straight goals, all off different players’ sticks, in a nearly 12-minute second-half stretch to secure their spot in Saturday’s title match.

After the game, Tillman said he wasn’t pleased with his team’s lapses. While the Terps out-shot Penn State, 36-32, the Nittany Lions won five more faceoffs and Maryland committed four fouls.

But the coach didn’t need to remind his team to stay focused after the match. Goalkeeper Kyle Bernlohr, fresh off a 12-save performance, looked ahead with determination in the post-game press conference. In Bernlohr’s five years with the program, the Terps had never won a conference tournament game.

Saturday, they’ll have the opportunity to capture a conference championship.

“This is huge, getting this one,” Bernlohr said. “Next one is a huge goal. We have the NCAA goal, this tournament goal, and the regular-season goal, so this is the second one we’ve got to notch off.”