Junior midfielder Bill McGlone isn’t used to losing. For that matter, neither are any members of the Terrapin men’s lacrosse team.
That’s why a 5-4 record, the team’s worst nine-game record since 1994, has kept McGlone up at night. No player on the team has ever experienced more than two losses at this point in the season.
“It’s very hard. After a loss, I’ll go out and try to forget about it,” McGlone said. “But when I put my head on my pillow, I get depressed and I keep replaying plays in my head and thinking about parts of the game.
“I try my hardest to take my mind off of it, but I can’t. So it’s been a struggle for me mentally to get over loss. And it’s happened a lot, so it’s been a lot to get over, especially losing three of the last four.”
Coach Dave Cottle said it’s been his toughest season in 20 years. Sophomore goalie Harry Alford said there’s been some finger pointing among the team. Sophomore defender Steve Whittenberg said the offense and defense have lacked cohesiveness.
Losing is never easy. But for a team that has sat comfortably at the top for so long, this season has been especially difficult. Heading into a game against the team’s biggest rival, Johns Hopkins, the Terps agreed this isn’t the best time for the team to have confidence issues.
“Nobody likes losing, and this one has been a tough one on me as a coach, because I’ve felt like I haven’t figured out how to help them yet,” Cottle said. “That’s what I’m frustrated about — not losing. I’ll take any result if the effort is good. There’s got to be something that we can do to get us over the hump, and that’s what is frustrating for me.”
The Terps lost to Duke after controlling the game midway through the third quarter. They fell to Dartmouth in a maddeningly slow-paced game. Virginia embarrassed the Terps by eight goals.
“After a loss, you don’t even want to come back on Monday,” McGlone said. “You don’t even want to think about lacrosse. You talk it over with teammates and figure out what you should have done. But you just have to put it behind you and think about the next game.”
All those losses hurt, but none compared to the pain Navy unleashed last Saturday. That loss has made moving on more difficult than usual.
After coming back from being down three goals and eventually taking an 8-7 lead, Navy scored the equalizer on a near-impossible shot with two minutes, two seconds left. Then the killer blow came. Navy senior Gill Graham ran through two Terp defenders to win the game with 14 seconds left.
On the brink of overcoming offensive woes and making a statement that the Terp machine was still on track, loss reared its ugly head again. Several Terps said they were heartbroken. The feeling was so bad, it still lingers.
“We were all down after that game,” sophomore defender Ray Megill said. “After that happens, it’s just like the icing on the cake. All game long we’re back and forth. And for [Graham] to go through two or three guys that late in the game, it just still hurts.”
For an offense that began the year with such high expectations, its shooting problems have been frustrating all season. The young defense has done well trying to grow out of last year’s All-American shadow, but has struggled at times.
“We need to stop pointing the finger at each other and take responsibility,” Alford said. “We just had a group meeting and just realized that we have to look in the mirror. It’s us. We can’t put ourselves before each other.”
The question is where to point the finger. The Terps still don’t quite know but have several theories. Sometimes the blame falls on a teammate or a unit.
“I guess we’re still trying to look for the answers and trying to figure out what’s wrong,” Alford said. “It’s really difficult for us because we’re used to seeing Maryland in the top five all the time. We’re just, like, ‘Wow, what’s happening?’ We need to pull it together soon.”
Much of the blame for the team’s problems has justly fallen on the offense’s shooting woes. The Terps are scoring on 25 percent of their shots. They are putting 55 percent of shots on goal compared to their opponents’ 64 percent.
“On the offensive end, I’ll be the first to take responsibility that we’re not scoring enough, and we’re not performing at the level that is expected of us,” McGlone said. “I’m willing to take on a lot of the blame as to why we’re not doing as well this year.”
While most teams gather in one large group during time-outs, the Terps split into two groups: offense and defense. After the game ends, they convene in a group meeting. This practice somewhat signifies the team’s atmosphere.
“I think we’re lacking that unity a little bit,” Whittenberg said. “I think offense is focusing on offense a little too much. Defense is focusing on defense too much instead of the team focusing on the team effort.”
One of the Terps’ problems is their lack of a proven leader, Alford said. He also said some players haven’t fully bought into the coaches’ teaching, preferring to go their own way. The Terps’ schedule — in the nation’s top five in difficulty — is also a major sticking point. Cottle said he’s most concerned with the team losing three close games.
Cottle, the third-winningest coach in college lacrosse with a 220-85 record, has at times shown his dissatisfaction with the season’s result.
“I have not lost a lot of games before,” Cottle said. “This is probably the worst losing streak that I’ve been through in 20 years. I knew that we were playing a lot of young kids and we’d be up and down. I knew we just had to survive.”
That’s what the Terps are trying to do now — survive. Their goal is to get into the NCAA tournament. A win over Johns Hopkins would ensure that. But heading into the team’s biggest game of the year — and one of its biggest regular season matchups in recent history — losses still weigh on their minds somewhat.
But Cottle said that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“I don’t think you become used to losing,” Cottle said. “You don’t want to become used to that.”
