This is a talented Terrapin men’s lacrosse team.

At least that’s what the experts have maintained and the team has preached all season.

Despite the hype, the Terps have rarely seemed comfortable in their own skin. So with that in mind, coach Dave Cottle continued to fiddle with the lineup, even up to the last game of the regular season.

It’s not something he’s done in his eight years at the helm, and it’s not something he’s particularly comfortable doing. But it does seem to be working.

“It’s a scary situation,” Cottle said. “It’s just that obviously what we were doing wasn’t working at a level that we needed it to work. It’s a very different situation.

“Saying that, you look at a team like Notre Dame, and they didn’t have to change,” Cottle continued. “And I think because we’ve had to change we’ve had to come up with some answers that probably helped us out.”

Saturday, the Terps will see if they have improved enough to match up with No. 2 seed Syracuse. The defending national champions await the Terps in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals in Hempstead, N.Y.

All indications are that attackman Grant Catalino will continue to run with the first midfield line and attackman Travis Reed will stay in the starting lineup.

The Terps will eschew their rotating-goalie system and stay with junior Brian Phipps, who had nine saves and allowed three goals in a first-round win at Notre Dame.

“Usually going into the postseason, last couple games, you try and get on a roll before the tournament and get your lineups set,” senior midfielder Dan Groot said. “That’s probably been the case my last three years here. But you know this year, we’ve been mixing things around all year and trying to find the right combination and I think it’s coming together at the right time.”

During a disappointing regular season, the Terps were a work in progress. The breakout game has perpetually seemed to be around the corner.

At one point, the Terps lost three consecutive games for the first time since 2005. The listless Terps often failed to execute and sometimes failed to compete at all.

“In the middle of the season there’s always doubt, especially after losing a couple tough ones,” Groot said. “But you know, we never got down on ourselves. We always thought that we had the potential, and if things click at the right time, we could have this opportunity.”

That’s why the Terps are here.

Cottle said the team owed its first-round success to smart, disciplined play. Phipps credited the win to hustle and bravado.

It doesn’t hurt that the opposition doesn’t know quite what to expect at this point.

“I don’t know if it’s an advantage to constantly change,” Cottle said. “But we are changing and if each week we can add just a little bit of something to it that can help us.”

Finding success, the Terps will try to build on their performance last weekend. This week, the players are happy to keep it simple.

“We’re gonna go out and I don’t think we’re gonna try and do anything too crazy or different,” Reed said. “This week we’re really practicing on making everything perfect and finely tuned. I think that will help us out.”

And the bottom line is simple: It doesn’t matter how the Terps got here. They are here now, with a chance to meet preseason expectations that seemed out of reach not long ago.

“We felt all along that this team was a team that was really not a first-round loser,” Cottle said. “Whether we’re gonna be a second-round winner or not, we’ll find out Saturday. But we’ve always felt we had the pieces. We just haven’t been able to put them together properly.”

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