At the beginning of the third quarter against Ohio State Sunday night, Maryland men’s lacrosse attackman Matt Rambo hurled three consecutive shots from the right of the net.
The junior had four points, but he wanted more.
While each of Rambo’s rockets sailed past the goal and into the corner of Maryland Stadium, forcing the people sitting on the ledge to dodge the ball, his aggressiveness mirrored that of the Terps’ in the third frame.
Coach John Tillman’s squad scored three goals in the first three minutes of the period, the spurt coming as part of a 7-0 run that spanned halftime.
Maryland had fallen in a two-goal hole midway through the first half, but that drive propelled the Terps to a 10-8 win against the Buckeyes. With the win, the team’s 10th straight, the Terps clinched at least a share of the regular-season Big Ten title.
“We knew Ohio State — they’ve been playing everybody tough,” Tillman said. “We didn’t expect too much different, and the game kind of started that way. So we knew we were just going to have to dig in.”
In addition to Rambo’s barrage, which included two goals and three assists, midfielder Bryan Cole and attackman Colin Heacock each tacked on two goals. Midfielders Henry West and Connor Kelly, meanwhile, tallied one goal and one assist apiece.
The group logged its production as the Terps out-shot the Buckeyes, 30-26, despite Ohio State winning the faceoff battle, 11-8, and fielding 21 ground balls to the Terps’ 18.
West scored the first of the seven unanswered goals when he took a feed from Rambo at the 5:36-mark in the second quarter. About two minute later, the senior then dished a pass back to Cole, who slung the ball past Ohio State goalkeeper Tom Carey (eight saves) to tie the game at five.
Cole thrust his hands in the air before reaching across his chest to mimic Super Man. Soon, West was airborne on the Canadian’s back.
But Cole wasn’t finished.
Tillman called a timeout with about a minute left in the first half, looking to set up a final shot. And with 45 seconds remaining on the clock, Cole reeled in a pass from Rambo, who lurked behind the net, and redirected it into the cage from the top of the attacking third.
“To be up at halftime after being down, I thought, was huge for us,” Tillman said as he turned to look at midfielder Isaiah Davis-Allen and Rambo in the postgame press conference, all three nodding their heads in agreement.
The Terps emerged from the intermission with a 30-second extra-man advantage after an Ohio State penalty rolled over from the first half. Rambo wasted little time building on his team’s one-goal lead, putting home a feed from midfielder Connor Kelly 22 seconds into the quarter.
The Glenside, Pennsylvania, native found an early look on the ensuing possession, too. While Carey blocked the attempt, the ball rolled out of the netminder’s stick toward midfielder Tim Rotanz. Rotanz corralled the ball and pushed it into the cage.
“It’s always 0-0 in our mind,” Rambo said. “You always want to be pushing the tempo and playing fast.”
Heacock capped the spurt with two goals across about a seven-minute period in the third frame.
Ohio State tried to string together a run of its own in the final quarter, tallying three unanswered goals to close the game. But the Buckeyes’ efforts came too late to stave off Maryland’s surge.
After sharing the Big Ten regular-season title with Johns Hopkins last season, the Terps will have the chance to earn sole possession of the championship with a win over the Blue Jays next weekend.
But after downing the Buckeyes, the Terps weren’t thinking that far ahead. It’s that mindset, Davis-Allen said, that helped rejuvenated the offense Sunday night.
“You can’t focus when you’re worried about the next…games,” Davis-Allen said. “You have to focus on that minute and that second.”
