Offensive woes led to Maryland field hockey’s untimely exit from Big Ten tournament!
Maryland area hockey coach Missy Meharg thought her squad had the functionality to win the Big Ten match. After all, they’d finished the ordinary season at sixteen-2, one of the great information within the educate’s College Park tenure.
But as an alternative, her team lost to No. Four Northwestern, a defeat that bowled over the veteran instructor.
I don’t have any words for it, she said. It’s a bit surprising. It’s not a trait of Maryland area hockey.
The Terps already beat the Wildcats in Evanston, Illinois, all through the normal season but faltered with a trip to the championship sport on the line because of a negative offensive showing that’s come to be too not unusual in current weeks.
Northwestern outshot Maryland 21-14 in the sport and 12-four in the first 1/2. The Terps’ offense caught again up inside the 2d 1/2 but couldn’t fully climb out of the hole they dug for themselves inside the first two quarters.
We had a slow start, that they had a depraved dominant one, Meharg stated. Had we performed the primary quarters like that, we in all likelihood would have won the sport with the way we have been dominating in the third and fourth zone.
The Wildcats created scoring chances by completing a flurry of long passes thru the midfield. That resulted in a one-sided cut-up in a time of possession that kept the Terps’ protection on their heels and their offense without the ball.
It in brief regarded just like the changes Meharg and her team made popping out of halftime would reignite the offense. Maryland attempted as many pictures inside the first three minutes after the intermission as it did in the whole first half and the Terps evened the score with a Hope Rose purpose overdue within the 0.33 region.
But just as it commenced to appear to be an equalizer became coming soon, the offense reverted and returned to its first-half malaise.
Maryland took the simplest three pictures in the very last 17 minutes of sport time, landed none heading in the right direction, and ended the sport without the tying purpose.
Team captains Danielle van Rootselaar, Emma DeBerdine, and Bibi Donraadt held the rest of the group in the locker room for almost an hour following the loss, Meharg said. They tried to research what went wrong and how to now not permit it to show up again.
The education highlighted two areas of displeasure. On offense, the Terps dribbled an excessive amount of. On defense, they allowed their opponents an excessive amount of area.
Meharg’s crew generally performs higher in those key regions, she stated but didn’t do so Friday.
For the most component, we do play like that, she said. We’ve been a first-rate subject hockey group. For some reason, we decided that we had been going to … dribble lots.
The NCAA event is up subsequent. Maryland, the No. Three universal seed is slated to stand 2021 country-wide finalist Liberty inside the first round. The Terps will host one of the match’s four regional websites with Princeton and Syracuse joining the Flames in College Park.
There’s precedent for the Terps of overcoming an early go-out in the convention tournament and then happening to make a deep run in the NCAA match. Last season, they made it to the Final Four after losing in the first spherical of the Big Ten event.
A country-wide championship remains the pinnacle prize, Maryland enormously coveted a convention identity, which it hasn’t won due to the fact of 2018.
They might’ve had a less complicated path to securing it as properly. No. 4 Michigan, which Maryland defeated in September, dissatisfied pinnacle-seed Penn State, which embarrassed the Terps in a 5-1 ordinary season loss.
But Maryland by no means had the danger to take advantage of that simpler tune.
Instead, they misplaced in a fashion unexpected to Meharg’s traditionally successful software. The defeat averted a journey to the championship sport and casts greater doubt on the viability of a country-wide name run with an offense that stagnates at inopportune instances.