Defender Michael Ehrhardt.
Two seasons ago, the then-No. 4 Terrapins men’s lacrosse team surrendered five straight fourth-quarter goals at unranked UMBC in an 8-7 loss.
The defeat stuck with coach John Tillman, and the following year he made special note of the rematch with the Retrievers, which was scheduled for March 6. The contest, though, was canceled because of inclement weather, forcing the Terps to wait another year for a shot at beating their in-state rival.
So, many Terps and Retrievers who competed in that matchup two years ago have graduated. Because of that, Tillman said he doesn’t truly view tomorrow’s game against UMBC at Byrd Stadium as a chance for revenge.
Even so, Tillman expects his players to use that loss two years ago as motivation, to take advantage of the opportunity to top another school from this state.
“There’s a competitive side to all of us,” Tillman said. “If you’re competitive, you’d like another opportunity to try to see if you could be on the winning side this time. And I don’t think that’s atypical.”
Midfielder Mike Chanenchuk and defender Michael Ehrhardt, both senior captains, are remaining members from the 2012 team. In the last matchup between the Terps and Retrievers, Chanenchuk scored an unassisted goal with 4:25 remaining in the third quarter — the last time his team found the back of the net before allowing five unanswered goals.
“It’s definitely stuck in my head,” Ehrhardt said.
As one of the few current players who endured the loss to the UMBC, Chanenchuk spent practice this week translating to the younger players a specific message he learned two years ago.
“Any game, we can win or we can lose,” Chanenchuk said. “We have to bring our all.”
Tillman said the Retrievers were able to find success late in that game two years ago because they had worn down the Terps defense with long possessions throughout the game. Plus, UMBC was able to keep the ball away from the Terps’ talented skill players for extended periods of time.
NCAA rule changes have since eliminated the stalling warning in favor of a 30-second shot clock, making it almost impossible to maintain the kind of possessions the Retrievers had against the Terps in their last matchup. Still, Tillman expects his opponent to take a similar approach Saturday.
“You have to basically be able to deal with the flow of the game,” Tillman said. “You have to understand that if they have the ball for long possessions, you’ve really got to dig down deep and stay focused and make sure that if it takes three minutes to get a stop, then that’s what you need to do.”
The two teams that take the field tomorrow at Byrd will look vastly different than those that played two years ago in Baltimore. The Terps graduated four of their top five goal scorers last season in Owen Blye, Jake Bernhardt, Kevin Cooper and John Haus. Not to mention that two seasons ago, they said farewell to Joe Cummings, who ranks 18th in program history with 86 career goals.
Ultimately, though, in-state bragging rights are on the line. And this time, Tillman wants to be the last team standing.
“This is a team that did get the best of [us] … a program that got the best of our program,” Tillman said. “We have to play better than we did.”
