Attackman Grant Catalino’s scoring has been down this season, and he has 20 goals headed into today’s game against North Carolina.
Entering the 2011 season, the Terrapin men’s lacrosse team boasted a well-known strength. With three returning senior starters and an up-and-coming sophomore on attack, the Terps — not to mention their opponents — knew that more often than not, that’s where their scoring would come from.
Those expectations played out in the season’s early going, as the Terps’ attack unit of Owen Blye, Grant Catalino, Travis Reed and Ryan Young combined to record exactly half of the 48 goals the team scored in its first three wins.
But recently, the unit hasn’t put up the kind of impressive numbers fans and opponents have become accustomed to. In the Terps’ past two games against Navy and No. 2 Johns Hopkins, the unit has combined to score just six goals, nearly a quarter of the team’s offensive total.
As the No. 6 Terps (8-3) prepare for tonight’s ACC Tournament semifinal matchup with No. 10 North Carolina (9-4) in Durham, N.C., though, players and coach John Tillman said they aren’t concerned with the unit’s lowered production of late.
Instead, the Terps see it as the byproduct of a diversification in scoring. As opposing teams have keyed in on the team’s known quantities at attack, the Terps’ relatively unheralded midfield group has emerged to fill the offensive void.
“Our team has evolved as the year has gone on,” Tillman said. “What we’ve had to do is figure out collectively what are the best things we can run depending on what people are doing against us. As we’ve gone through the year, we’ve evolved and changed and tweaked some things.
“Some games it might be [midfielder] Joe Cummings, other times it might be Grant or Owen or [midfielder] John Haus. A lot of it is depending on what they take away or if they pay attention to one guy, it should open things up for someone else.”
Tillman’s declaration is justified. The Terps still average 11.7 goals per game — good for seventh-best in Division I — and have surpassed the 10-goal plateau in their past three outings despite the lower-than-normal numbers from the attack.
The team’s midfielders have been particularly impressive, scoring nine goals against the Blue Jays on Saturday and eight against Virginia on April 2. Cummings, a natural attackman in high school who switched to midfield in college, has emerged as the Terps’ most dangerous offensive threat this year and leads the team in goals with 24.
“I wouldn’t say we’re struggling,” Catalino said of the attack unit. “[Cummings] is starting to play big and a lot of other guys are contributing, so it’s not like I have to score five goals every week for us to win. Other people are putting up numbers.”
Tillman said he has seen other teams key in specifically on Catalino, who scored a team-high 33 goals last regular season but has only 20 this season. With some teams opting to completely lock off Catalino, a relatively immobile attackman who many consider to be one of the nation’s best shooters, ample space has often opened up for the team’s midfielders and other attackmen to dodge.
Lately, the Terps have successfully run two-man pick plays from behind the cage featuring one attackman and one midfielder that are designed to set up a one-on-one dodge against a short-stick defender.
“One of those two guys are going to end up on the stat sheet even though it took all six guys,” Blye said. “Every guy on the field out there is dangerous.”
The Terps’ attack has traditionally had success at the ACC Tournament — Catalino, Reed and Young have combined to average 6.25 points per game in their three years of conference tournament play, and Blye scored one goal in his first tournament last year — but players don’t think it’s imperative for the attack unit to show up on the score sheet this weekend.
That is, at least, if the midfielders can continue carrying the offensive load.
“It’s not important if the attack has a big weekend,” Blye said. “It’s just important that we come out with a win, whether it’s the middies doing the scoring, the attack or combined. It’s a group effort. If the middies are scoring goals, the attack is probably setting it up and vice versa. All that matters is that we come out with a ‘W.'”
TERP NOTE: A team spokesman confirmed Wednesday that Young will play this weekend. Young’s mother, Maria, died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer Sunday night. Her funeral service is scheduled for Monday.
jengelke@umdbk.com
