Army Knocks Out Defending NCAA Champion Maryland

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Thirteen years removed from ending a reigning national champion’s title defense in the first round, Army did it again Saturday night.

Only this time, it wasn’t nearly as eye-opening.

Anyone who paid attention to these Black Knights knew they were one of the most reliable teams in the country. They were in every game, absorbing three losses by a combined four goals.

So for Army to dispatch fourth-seeded Maryland 16-15 before 1,932 at SECU Stadium?

It was right in line with what the Black Knights have been all season.

“There’s just a tremendous belief in the room,” said midfielder Jacob Morin, who scored the go-ahead goal with 3:36 remaining. “When you pair that with an unrelenting effort, good things happen. We’re really happy to be here, and we’re not done yet.”

Army (13-3) advanced to next Sunday’s quarterfinals to face either fifth-seeded Penn State or unseeded Princeton in Annapolis, Md.

Gunnar Fellows scored three goals and Knox Dent made 16 saves for the Black Knights, who earned their first postseason victory since knocking off two-time champion Syracuse in the first round of the 2010 tournament.

Braden Erksa had four goals and an assist for the Terrapins (10-6), who became the first defending champion to be ousted in the first round since North Carolina in 2017. It was the first time Maryland was ousted in the first round since 2013, and the first time the Terps had dropped their postseason opener as a No. 5 seed or better since 2001.

Coupled with its 14-5 loss to Michigan in the Big Ten tournament final, Maryland also dropped back-to-back games for the first time since 2019.

All of which is to say these Terps were the not the juggernaut their undefeated predecessors were.

None of which takes away from Army getting goals from 11 players to earn a spot in the second weekend of the tournament.

“Winning in Division I lacrosse is really, really hard to do,” coach Joe Alberici said. “People like Maryland make it look it easy. They’ve been so great for so long. It’s really hard to do, and when you put yourself in an NCAA tournament, to get victories is incredibly difficult. There’s no words I have for the pride I have in this team.”

Anyone drawing up a path for Army to win likely would have assumed it would have included quality play from Dent, a first-year starter in the cage; a roughly 50/50 day for Black Knights faceoff ace Will Coletti; and a methodical, grind-it-out approach Alberici’s team perfected while scoring between 10 and 12 goals in eight of its last nine games (and going 7-2 in those contests).

Well, two out of three isn’t bad. Dent indeed stole a few from the Terps, in the process overcoming a goal he accidentally kicked into the net. And Coletti went 17 of 35 against Maryland’s Luke Wierman, effectively preventing the Terps from tilting the field at any time other than the second quarter.

But the way Army won this game — especially down attackman Paul Johnson and midfielder Bailey O’Connor — was both impressive and unanticipated. Finn McCullough started in place of Johnson and blew by two different defenders for goals. Avi Mehl had a goal and an assist after entering with two goals and two assists. Mike Tangredi, playing in only his fifth game of the season, scored for the second time all year.

Even Alberici figured this would be a 10-8 or 10-9 tussle, right out of his team’s usual playbook. But then the game started, and Army kept winning matchup after matchup. It led 7-2 after a quarter, becoming the first team to score seven goals in a quarter on Maryland in a postseason game since Hofstra in the 2000 first round.

“It seemed clear early on that athletically, that we could put some pressure on them,” Alberici said. “We started moving a little bit away from the picking game because we were able to win a lot of those matchups. Eleven different guys scoring goals, we were coming at them from a lot of different directions.”

It was the most goals Maryland surrendered in the first quarter of an NCAA tournament contest since spotting Princeton eight early in the 1997 title game.

“Not a great way to start, digging ourselves a hole,” coach John Tillman said. “Seven goals in a quarter, we’re getting up to what we like to keep guys to in a game. It wasn’t one thing. Give them credit. They were opportunistic.”

Maryland rallied to tie it at 8 at the half, and briefly took a 12-11 lead into the fourth quarter before Army punched back with two scores. The Terps tied it up twice more, but Morin’s go-ahead goal coupled with Fellows’ insurance tally with 53 seconds provided a cushion.

A needed one, it turned out, since Daniel Kelly scored with 36 seconds left to get Maryland within a goal. Wierman won the ensuing faceoff, and the Terps got three shots off in the final 30 seconds. None were on cage, and when long pole Christian Fournier collected his sixth ground ball of the night and heaved it to midfield, Army had sealed the victory.

“They were able to get some shots off quick, and our guys were getting into the hands and forcing them to take some bad shots,” Dent said. “At the end of the day, the defense kind of bailed me out there. I didn’t get too many shots there at the end. Then Fournier came up with that huge ground ball at the end.”

It brought an early end to Maryland’s title defense and an unpredictable season. The Terps delivered some riveting victories — a signature triumph at Virginia in March and a payback victory at Johns Hopkins in the Big Ten semifinals among them — but also lost three games by at least five goals.

The kind of year the Terps had after graduating so much production wasn’t astonishing. Yet in a way it was jarring, considering they had reached the semifinals in nine of the last 11 NCAA tournaments and won two championships along the way.

Goalie Logan McNaney’s season-ending injury in February and the arm injury that cost defenseman Ajax Zappitello the last four games were fitting bookends for a team that figured to be more defense-centric from the start of the year but struggled to stay healthy.

Instead, as defenseman Brett Makar aptly put it during the Big Ten tournament, the Terps seemed to be held together by duct tape at times. And that’s probably not sustainable, even if they didn’t go quietly against Army.

“Lots of ups and downs, even tonight,” Makar said. “We didn’t start great, but the way we battled back summed up what this group did all year. Whether is it was injuries, guys battling back Monday to Friday to play on Saturday, I couldn’t be more proud of these guys. I know the program is in great hands. You saw a lot of guys grow up fast this year.”

So has Army. Look at the Black Knights’ production Saturday.  Fellows? A freshman. Midfielder Evan Plunkett, he of the goal and three assists? A freshman. Mehl, Dawson Clark (who had an extra-man goal) and starting defenseman John Sullivan? All freshmen.

With help coming from so many places on the roster, it’s little wonder Army handled its own personnel issues so deftly — and earned another week together in the process.

“There wasn’t any sense of panic from anybody in the room,” Alberici said. “There was a great belief in the next guy, and it’s kind of how we’ve handled it this season.”