The Maryland women’s lacrosse team has made a habit of starting slow in games.

In most cases the Terps have turned it around quickly, but that wasn’t the case in the Terps’ last game against Princeton, when the Tigers held a four-goal lead deep into the second half before Maryland staged a comeback to win its 11th straight game.

Maryland opened the scoring against Princeton but the Tigers quickly responded with a 7-1 run.

On Sunday against Ohio State, the Terps hope to correct that trend.

“We all could all see and feel going into the Princeton game that our energy wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and I think that played a big role,” defender Lizzie Colson said. “We just need to be focused every minute of every game and come out strong and come out focused, no matter who our opponent is.”

Colson said to get in the right mindset before games, the team huddles and says that they’re playing for the person standing to their right. She also said that keeping warmups loose gets the team excited to play.

The team believes energy is the key to playing a higher level of lacrosse than they’ve achieved this season.

“We need to go out there and think that we need to play our best Maryland lacrosse in that 60 minutes,” goalkeeper Megan Taylor said. “We’ve put together a nice 45 to 30 minutes, and I think once we get the 60-minute mark that will be awesome for us.”

While the team said setting the right tone before the game is particularly important, it also has to work to keep its intensity up after the final whistle. Doing that is a group effort, Colson said.

Though Ohio State (5-8, 1-3 Big Ten) have struggled this year, Maryland (13-1, 3-0) shouldn’t require any extra motivation to compete against the Buckeyes, who knocked them out of the 2015 Big Ten tournament.

“Our seniors were a part of that game, so that’s something too that can kind of fuel our [fire] moving on,” coach Cathy Reese said. “It’s just a reminder for all of us that on any given day, anything can happen. … So we need to make sure that we control what we can and control how we play and do it from the opening whistle.”