Maryland men's lacrosse sees coaching staff shakeup following 2026 season

John Gugs
4 days ago
2 min read

After three seasons anchoring the offense, Maryland men's lacrosse saw a shakeup this week along the coaching staff after Mike Phipps announced he's stepping down from his role as offensive coordinator to pursue a career outside of the sport.

“I'm just looking forward to the next step in my life,“ Phipps told Inside Lacrosse on Sunday. ”A big thing for me is being able to be around my girls and watch them grow up and have a bigger presence in their life. I love the Terps and just can't wait to sit back and watch them with my family as a fan.”

The 2007 graduate from the University of Maryland had led the Terps offense to score 10.97 goals per game in his three years leading the offense. The Terps’s shooting percentage was below 30% in two of the three season’s Phipps was in charge, as well their man up unit struggling over the past three years only being successful at a 30.3% rate. Some of the offense's criticism under Phipps was the very limited ball movement and off ball movement by the offense. Lots of times, the ball would die in players sticks and would lead to a turnover or a very bad shot. A reason the ball movement was bad at times would be how little guys seemed to move off the ball as well. There seemed to be a lot of standing around at times with the Terps offense the last three years.

One big issue that plagued the offense was turnovers. The Terps have characteristically been one of the better teams in the country with turning the ball over and playing a clean game. However, over the last three seasons the Terps offense was turning the ball over 14.52 times per game. Thankfully the Terps have had elite defenses and face-off play so the turnovers did not hurt them nearly as much as they could have but they had become a big problem over the last few years.

The news of Phipps leaving comes just after the Terps landed two attackman commits from the transfer portal in Garrett Haas and Ryan Demato. Demato and Haas are joining an offense that will look to be very young in 2027 with none of their starting attackmen returning and just one of their starting midfielders returning in Elijah Stopbaugh. The Terps will look towards a lot of promising young names that will be returning to help the offense in 2027 in Spencer Ford, Matt Higgins, Johnny Gardiner, and Jack Shultz. Also look for some incoming freshmen to try to earn a spot on offense as rotational pieces with how many young faces will be getting minutes next season.

After the nation’s longest streak of making the NCAA Tournament was snapped this year when the Terps failed to earn an at-large big, John Tillman and his staff have been doing everything they can to make sure last season does not repeat itself. This offseason will arguably be his biggest off-season yet since taking over the Terps in looking to turn things around and get back to the national championship to try and win another ring.

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