Michigan Continues Mastery of Maryland, Upsets No. 1 in 3OT

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — It’s that time of the year for Michigan to figure things out.

It happened in 2023, when the Wolverines were 4-4 entering April before stunning defending national champion Maryland on the road. By mid-May, Michigan was 10-6 with a host of program firsts — Big Ten tournament champs, an NCAA tournament appearance and a first-round victory at Cornell.

And there was a repeat last year. Even after picking off the Terrapins again, the Wolverines were a .500 team with little hope of an NCAA tournament berth unless it went on another burner. And that they did, beating Ohio State in their regular-season finale, then plowing through Ohio State, Johns Hopkins and Penn State to claim another Big Ten crown.

So what to make of Saturday’s 11-10 triple-overtime victory at Maryland, a game equal measures riveting and laborious?

“It’s a long season, and we grind it out,” Michigan coach Kevin Conry said. “We grind it out in February and March so we’re ready for Big Ten play. That’s been our recipe for success for the last two years.”

It is impossible to ignore how much the Wolverines’ success against Maryland (7-1, 0-1 Big Ten) has been part (or at least preceded) some of the program’s greatest accomplishments. With Saturday’s victory, Michigan (5-4, 1-0) joined Notre Dame as the only teams to win four in a row against the Terps since John Tillman’s hire after the 2010 season.

While the Irish’s run was broken up by a one-year hiatus in the series (two of the Notre Dame victories came in 2014, the one-year overlap when both programs were in the ACC), the list of teams to beat Maryland in three consecutive seasons in the last 15 years is a little longer.

There’s 2011-13 Virginia, 2011-14 North Carolina (which Maryland beat twice in 2011 to prevent an extended run) and 2013-15 Johns Hopkins.

And now 2022-24 Michigan.

In the micro, zeroing in solely on these Wolverines, they are getting healthier. They played a tactically prudent game, slowing down the pace — especially in the fourth quarter and overtime — and applying pressure to a Maryland defense more than content to let opponents blast away from distance early in the shot clock.

And it was almost a built-in pivot point after getting thumped 19-7 at home a week earlier against Notre Dame. Conry called it “hitting the refresh button,” but it’s not hard to imagine this was a week Michigan dedicated itself to playing its crispest game.

“We’ve been close,” said goalie Hunter Taylor, who made the last of his 13 saves on a transition bouncer by Maryland long pole Jack McDonald in the closing seconds of the second extra period. “We’ve been knocking on the door. We’ve been tied up late in games. We’ve had an overtime game. It just feels really good to put it all together.”

From a wider lens, though, there is a logic to why Michigan might be particularly well-suited to thrive once Big Ten play arrives: The Wolverines’ identity under Conry was designed to do exactly that.

When Conry was hired after the 2017 season, Michigan had spent only six years as a varsity program. In the Big Ten’s first three seasons, the Wolverines were 1-14 in league play. Conry, the defensive coordinator for Maryland’s 2017 national title team, was part of success in the early years of the conference.

The match made sense. Even now, Michigan and Hopkins are the only Big Ten schools to change coaches since the league added lacrosse. The league’s long-time coaches made massive contributions to the feel and the style of the conference; Michigan had a chance to adjust and adapt in a more wide-ranging way.

Still, that took time — time to scale up a nascent program, time to recruit, time sort through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And Saturday is the latest indication Michigan has become particularly well-suited to the second half of the season. For his part, Tillman looks to the opposite sideline for a major reason the Wolverines have gotten the better of Maryland of late.

“I think the biggest thing in the last four — and the only thing that’s really changed — is Scott Bieda, and Scott Bieda is an awesome offensive coordinator and he does a tremendous job,” Tillman told reporters. “Since he’s gotten there, they’re just tricky. … They’re just super-organized. They had a good plan. It was very apparent they were going to work deep into the shot clock, shorten the game and wait for a good shot.”

Bieda — young enough to have played Big Ten lacrosse at Rutgers in 2015 and 2016, old enough to be in his ninth year as a college assistant — had a hand in Saturday’s triple-overtime winner. Emmett Houlihan found Nick Roode in a seam about eight yards from the goal, and Roode quickly deposited a clear look with 1:06 left in the third period to set off a celebration.

“Emmett Houlihan had a lot of faith in his eyes and said, ‘Coach, I’m going to do it this way,’ and I said, ‘You know what Emmett, that’s a really good idea,’” Conry said. “He and coach Bieda got together and drew something up, and for the most part, executed at a high level. It was just a strong sense of belief.”

Belief that an in-season turnaround is plenty possible helps, too. Michigan’s done it the last two years, and most of its current contributors played a role in at least one of those seasons.

Coaches love to invoke the platitude of playing their best lacrosse at the end of the season. There might not be anyone who takes it as literally as Michigan, which plays three of its next four at home, starting with Saturday’s visit from Johns Hopkins.

“We’d like to get a couple of those victories in February and March,” Conry said. “It didn’t fall our way this year. We look ahead and put the Terps behind us and focus on the Blue Jays.”