The Terrapin men’s lacrosse team isn’t always fun to watch.
This team doesn’t rely on spinning, twisting goals or perfect passes out of double-teams. Even as coach Dave Cottle has emphasized the transition game, the Terps are still basically a slug-it-out team predicated on smart, tough defensive play.
“When you watch us play, you’re not marveled by what we look like. We’re just not pretty,” Cottle said after Saturday’s loss to Johns Hopkins. “But we just keep coming at you. And I thought the character that our kids showed, the way they battled, the way they hung in there – that was what I was most impressed with.”
The Terps held Johns Hopkins’ top 5 scorers entering the game (Steven Boyle, Jake Byrne, Michael Kimmel, Stephen Peyser and Paul Rabil) to just 2 goals on Saturday, forcing a slumping junior attackman and a sophomore midfielder with one career goal to beat them.
Unfortunately for the Terps, Kevin Huntley, the attackman, and Austin Walker, the midfielder, were up for the challenge. The pair combined for five goals against the Terps and carried the Blue Jays into the overtime period, where Rabil sunk the Terps’ hopes.
And while proud of the defensive effort against Johns Hopkins’ top scorers, senior defender Ray Megill knows his team needs to work on preventing role players from beating them.
“Usually during the week the coaches stress who the key players are that we need to stop,” Megill said. “And usually we do a pretty good job to stop them. We focus on the other players as well, but sometimes we don’t pay as much attention as we should. And they just got some opportunities and they scored on them.”
The Terps have the ability to dominate defensively. With their experience, athleticism, and confidence, they have shown flashes of brilliance. The Terps have only allowed two opponents to score more than three goals this season, Virginia’s Ben Rubeor and Duke’s Matt Danowski – No. 1 and 2 in the nation in scoring, respectively.
A key in stopping such big names in lacrosse has been Cottle’s defensive philosophy of playing each opposing individual player completely differently. The defensive rarely looks similar from game to game, as Cottle finds his opponents’ weak spots and tries to dissect them.
The process can prove to be a little too much to handle for younger players, but the Terps are loaded with defensive experience and the younger guys have picked up situational drills as the season has progressed.
“We say all the time, ‘failing to prepare is to prepare to fail,'” Cottle said. “So we have to prepare and we have to have an understanding of what we’re doing. And we have some experienced guys. So with terminology we can make a change and they can make an adjustment. We couldn’t do this if it was all freshmen.”
The Terps will now be playing with one of their top defensive leaders down, though. Senior short stick and team captain Jimmy Borell broke his foot against Johns Hopkins, and will likely miss the rest of the season.
With junior short stick Jeff Reynolds having missed nearly the entire year after tearing his ACL in the season opener against Bellarmine, the Terps are left without their top two short stick defenders coming into the season. Pressure is now on graduate student Paul Andrews, junior Zach Hinton, a converted long pole, and red shirt sophomore Spencer McAllister to pick up where Borell left off.
“We’ll miss his athleticism,” Cottle said. “He’s a wing on the faceoffs, he plays man down, he can run from defense to offense. Jimmy is one of the most important guys on our team.”
Andrews and Hinton, along with players like junior defender Ryne Adolph and sophomore long pole Mike Griswold, have played more at crucial points in recent games, even before Borell went down. Cottle is attempting to give his top defenders some rest to keep them fresh for the long run.
In the process, he is also preparing his future starters for next season.
“Instead of just having them come off the bench and jump into a starting role, they’ll already have experience playing in high-stakes games,” senior defender Steve Whittenberg said. “I think that will just lead to better defense next year.”
As for this season, the defense is already rather strong. Even if it isn’t pretty.
Contact reporter Adi Joseph at atosephdbk@gmail.com.
