The Maryland men’s lacrosse team endured six ties in Monday’s national championship against North Carolina, but it couldn’t pull ahead with the game deadlocked in overtime.
After surrendering a two-goal lead late in the fourth quarter, coach John Tillman’s squad fell to the Tar Heels, 14-13, to leave championship weekend as runners-up for the second straight year. The Terps have not won a title since 1975 despite going to 19 Final Fours.
Tillman broke down in the postgame press conference at the thought of his players’ disappointment in the locker room, but the Terps had a reason to smile the previous 16 games. After a slow start, the Terps rebounded during the rest of the season to finish the campaign with multiple program-best marks.
“When things aren’t going well, you want to make it better, and that’s the hardest thing,” Tillman said. “Right now, we just have to deal with the disappointment, and I told them that eventually it gets a little less severe. It dulls a little bit, and we have to reflect back on the journey.”
This season’s journey featured a 16-game winning streak, a mark the program hadn’t reached in its first 91 years. After losing two of their first three games, the Terps rattled off 16 wins in an 82-day stretch, winning the Big Ten regular-season and tournament championships and becoming the NCAA Tournament’s No. 1 seed in the process.
The run also helped the Terps set a program high with 17 wins, besting last season when Maryland won 15 games.
Midfielder Bryan Cole, a 2016 first-team All-American, kept the string of wins intact with two straight game-winning goals. First he scored in the final minute of regulation at Michigan on April 2 before putting home a goal in the final minute of overtime against Penn State on April 10. The wins were the first two of the team’s seven Big Ten wins in an undefeated conference slate.
Cole and goalkeeper Kyle Bernlohr, both redshirt seniors this season, were the team’s longest-tenured players leading a group of seniors who won a program-best 55 games in four years. Six of the Terps veterans were selected in the Major League Lacrosse draft before the season, the most ever from one school.
“For what these seniors have done,” Tillman said, “I don’t think we could ask too much more.”
Even though these players won’t return to the program next season, the Terps believe that they have the foundation for another quality squad.
Five starters this season were juniors, including all three attackmen who finished the season with career-high statistics. Attackman Matt Rambo led the team with 43 goals, 32 assists and 75 points. Rambo set the Maryland record by tallying 23 points in the NCAA Tournament.
After moving to the front line two games into the season, attackman Colin Heacock also eclipsed the 40-goal mark, his 40th serving as the game-winner in overtime against Brown in the semifinals.
The Terps also return starting defenders Mac Pons and Tim Muller, the latter of whom caused a team-high 24 turnovers. Junior midfielder Isaiah Davis-Allen earned first-team All America honors as a short-stick defender.
As the team’s only sophomore starter, midfielder Connor Kelly tallied four scores in the title game. Redshirt sophomore midfielders Tim Rotanz and Lucas Gradinger, meanwhile, emerged as rotation players on the Terps’ second line.
The Terps won’t face the same uncertainty at the faceoff X they did entering this year, either. Despite battling injuries, faceoff specialist Austin Henningsen finished the season with a .590 winning percentage.
But as focused and competitive as the Terps were about trying to win a national championship, the team said one of the most important accomplishments was adopting 6-year-old Fionn Crimmins, who is battling cancer, through Team Impact.
Fionn became a rallying point on and off the field. After downing Brown on Saturday afternoon, the players sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to their youngest teammate so loudly the sound traveled through the walls and into the Bears’ press conference.
“Fionn has touched our team in a special way,” Davis-Allen said. “We all realize that it’s not as important playing a sport, and Fionn’s taught us a lesson of life, how life’s short and you have to do the best you can to have an impact on as many people’s lives as possible.”
That’s part of the reason Tillman said he was emotional at the end of the season. After beating Syracuse in the quarterfinals, the coach said he loved this year’s team “to death.” He ended his opening statements mentioning his excitement to have more time with his players each time they advanced.
“It’s been such a good group on so many levels,” Tillman said. “School, community service and on the field, so I’m super proud of them, and I’m sad to see them go.”
