WASHINGTON — The Maryland men’s lacrosse team was beaten 10-5 by the University of Denver in the National Championship Monday, as they couldn’t complete what would have been the first sweep of the men’s and women’s title in the sport since Princeton did so in 1994. But the fact that both teams made their respective title game is indicative of how strong each program has become, and may just be a preview of a truly great year for the University of Maryland athletic department.
Many people pointed to the move to the Big Ten as strictly a financial decision, to pull the department out of a $21 million hole through the increased revenues of their new conference. The thought, at the time, was that the teams themselves would take their lumps on the field. There were questions of whether or not teams would be competitive enough to draw crowds.
Thus far, those questions have been answered on the playing field, but also at the box office. The football team, seemingly overmatched entering a much tougher conference last season, earned its way to a bowl game, and established itself with huge road wins over Penn State in Happy Valley and at the Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan late in the season.
Maryland football drew better than 45,000 fans at five of six home games, including a pair of sellout crowds of 51,802.
Meanwhile, despite moving out of the ACC and away from its long-standing rivalries, the men’s basketball team averaged just under 13,000 a game, a number that will likely only rise with the hype around the program headed into next season.
Coach Mark Turgeon’s crew surged to a surprising season, which saw the Terrapins make their first NCAA Tournament in five years. They were dealt a physically devastating second-round exit by West Virginia, but with Melo Trimble coming back, the team has made a number of additions this spring, with two in particular standing out.
Turgeon landed the sixth-rated recruit in the country, 6-foot-10 center Diamond Stone out of Milwaukee. His size immediately addresses Maryland’s most pressing need for a quality big man. The only notable departure from last year’s squad is senior guard Dez Wells, who will be replaced by Duke transfer Rasheed Sulaimon. After being dismissed from Duke, Sulaimon — who averaged nearly 12 points per game as a freshman before regressing the last two years — decided to join Turgeon (who recruited him at Texas A&M) in College Park.
Many are projecting the Terps as a top-five caliber team with the potential to make their first Final Four run since 2002, when they captured the national title. Bovada even lists them at 9/1 to win the whole thing, the shortest odds on the board at the moment.
Of course, Brenda Frese doesn’t have to look too far back to remember the last Final Four for Maryland’s women’s team. Despite losing their All-American leader from the year before, the Terrapins reloaded and reeled off 28 straight wins before bowing out to eventual champion UConn in the national semifinal game.
With all but one rotation player returning and top recruits Brianna Frase and Kiah Gillespie joining the fray, Frese is poised to take her team on another deep run next March. The women’s team also continues to be a top-20 draw nationwide among D-1 programs.
But before looking too far ahead, one team has work left to do this season, as it establishes itself as a national power. With a strong showing at the Big 10 Tournament over the weekend, Terps baseball secured a spot in the NCAA Tournament. It’s the second straight year they’ve made the field after never having done so before in the program’s history.
They snapped Illinois’ 27-game winning streak along the way, and came up just a run shy in the title game. They have a tough test in front of them, playing in Los Angeles in top overall seed UCLA’s bracket. But led by one of the nation’s top pitchers in sophomore Mike Shawaryn, the Terrapins can still dream of a first-ever College World Series appearance.
The Big Ten, long an afterthought among baseball powers, boasts five teams in the NCAA Tournament after having just two apiece each of the past two seasons. And though John Szefc’s club has to travel to Los Angeles and face top overall seed UCLA, his program is poised for continued success, much like the other programs in College Park.
