Maryland men’s lacrosse completes comeback, tops Ohio State 12-11 in OT win

Maryland found themselves trailing all night, down by as many as five, before forcing overtime and squeezing out a 12-11 win over Ohio State on Friday night.

Maryland never led in the game until Braden Erksa scored the game-winning overtime goal.

To start the game out, both teams defenses had started strong only giving up five goals total in the first quarter. Ohio State had jumped out to an early 2-0 lead before the Terps would come right back to tie it up thanks to Daniel Kelly who scored both goals. However with just less then ten seconds left in the first quarter Ohio State would score once more to take the 3-2 lead into the second quarter.

In the second quarter, the Buckeyes would start to pull away from the Terps and would capitalize on the defense looking confused and out of position at times. The Buckeyes would go on to score four straight goals to start the fourth quarter before Zach Whittier would score to stop the 5-0 run by Ohio State. The Terps would score two more goals in the first half thanks to Ryan Siracusa and a man up goal by Owen Murphy. The Terps however would also give up two more goals to the Buckeyes to make it 8-5 heading into halftime.

Kelly and Whittier were leading the Terps offensively with two points each. Ohio State’s leading scorer was Ed Shean who had a hat trick against the Terps already.

To start the scoring for the second half was Ajax Zappitello off a fast break and would give the Terps a momentum boost heading into the rest of the second half. The Terps defense would start to hunker down and would only give up two goals in the entire second half. Jack Meyers and Shean would score Ohio State’s only points in the second half with both coming in the third quarter. Eric Spanos would score his first goal of the game and Whittier would score his second of the game to make it an 11-8 game with Ohio State leading heading into the fourth quarter.

In the fourth quarter, the Terps would go on a 3-0 run to tie the game up with just over two minutes left into the game. Spanos would get his second goal of the game and Kelly would get his third and fourth goals of the game giving the Terps their 67th straight game with a player having a hat trick. The Terps would then get a chance to take their first lead of the day thanks to an equipment violation on Ohio State for their face-off man not having the right gloves on. The Terps however would not be able to capitalize and would give Ohio State the ball back with just over a minute left in the game. Zappitello and Brett Makar would both cause a ground ball to wind the rest of the time down in the game and send it to overtime.

Luke Wierman wound up winning the opening face-off for the Terps and give them the first possession of overtime. Erksa would get the ball behind the cage and would hand his defender up. Once the Ohio State goalie came out to help defend him, Erksa took advantage and made a move towards goal and put it away between the goalie’s legs for the game-winning goal.

Wierman went 19-26 on the day from the face-off in a bounce back performance for him after losing his matchups last week. Brian Ruppel finished the day with nine saves and picked up a ground ball as well. Zappitello finished the day leading the Terps in caused turnovers with three. The Terps will look to continue their path to earning the one seed in the big ten tournament and continue their winning ways next week against Rutgers at Rutgers.

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