The No. 8 Maryland field hockey team hasn’t been happy with its play in the first half of a game since Sep. 17 against Indiana. The Terps have fallen behind 1-0 in their past three games.

Maryland came back to tie each of those games and win two of them, but they’re still looking to play better from the opening whistle. When the Terps take the field Tuesday against No. 14 Old Dominion, they’ll hope to get off to the right start.

“We’ve been talking about correcting that a lot, obviously,” forward Emma Rissinger said. “It’s been happening in the past couple of games.”

The silver lining is that coach Missy Meharg’s team doesn’t seem to let its sluggish beginnings carry deep into games.

Against Michigan on Friday, the Terps took more shots and earned more penalty corners in the first nine minutes after halftime than they did in the entire first half. They also scored to erase the 1-0 lead Michigan took into the break.

In that second period, Maryland took 12 shots and earned five penalty corners after shooting four times and taking one penalty corner in the first half. The team sandwiched two goals around Michigan’s second score of the game to force overtime.

“To me, once we came out of halftime, Maryland was the team that was going to win the game,” Meharg said. “You could feel it. I didn’t have a hesitation.”

In the fourth minute of overtime, Rissinger scored to secure a 3-2 win.

“If we play our best, we can beat any team,” Rissinger said. “[Friday], especially in the second half, we showed it.”

Meharg said some of the improvements come from tactical adjustments.

Iowa’s defensive rotations confused the Terps early on in their Sept. 23 matchup. Two days later, Northwestern brought a powerful playing style the Terps hadn’t seen in 2016.

That trend continued Friday when Meharg thought her team was giving Michigan center back Katie Trombetta too much time with the ball in the first half.

“She was distributing the ball without a lot of pressure,” Meharg said. “We dropped our center forward and we doubled down on her. That seemed to quiet her down.”

Meharg said the change forced Michigan to “play through their side midfielders,” which the Wolverines struggled with. The Terps took advantage.

Along with the Terps having to adjust to their opponents’ styles of play, the team has lacked the proper mentality from the opening whistle, goalkeeper Sarah Bates said.

The team feels its energy is too low early in games. Rissinger said halftime offers them a chance to regroup and talk about how to improve.

“At halftime, we’re all like, ‘That was not what we can do,'” Rissinger said. “So then, in the second half we come out and we know what we need to do.”

In their win over Michigan, Maryland benefited from increased communication and excitement.

When forward Welma Luus tied the game at 2-2 with less than 10 minutes to play, she turned toward the Terps’ bench, yelled and pumped her fist. It was a signal of the amount of spirit the team had brought with them out of halftime.

“We were relentless,” Rissinger said. “We were just pressing and pressing and we knew we were gonna get those goals, so it felt good.”

Now, the objective is to bring that from the beginning.

“We need to keep working at it,” Rissinger said.