Preview: Maryland men’s lacrosse hosts Michigan for Senior Day

Maryland 6-2 (1-0) vs Michigan 4-4 (0-1)

When: Saturday April 1st, 1pm

Where: SECU Stadium

TV: ESPNU

The Terps started off conference play with a 13-10 win over Penn State at home last week. This week they will be taking on the Michigan Wolverines for the senior day. The Terps will be looking to stay red hot and get their winning streak to four.

For Michigan, they have a three headed monster at attack with all three players having at least 29 total points. Josh Zawada is the veteran leader of the group but he still has the least points of the three with just 29. Michael Boehm and Ryan Cohen are the other two attackmen to watch out for and they both have 34 total points. If you try and shut one of them off completely, the other two will go off. It is going to truly take a full team effort on defense to slow Michigan down who is averaging 13.3 goals a game including 10.7 goals a game against ranked teams. The good news for the Terps is outside of the Wolverines big three, no other plyers havemore then 12 points. So while they have a balanced attack between Boehm, Cohen, and Zawada, they do not have many other reliable options outside of them.

The weakness of the Wolverines is their defense. Michigan gives up 13.4 goals a game including 15.8 goals a game against ranked teams. If the Terps want to avoid the upset, they will need to take advantage of the Wolverines’ Achilles heel and score a lot of goals. Jack Whitney and Ryan Schriber lead the Wolverines defensively. Whitney leads the team with 11 caused turnovers which is four more then any other player on the team. Schriber has six caused turnovers of his own but is also a ground ball machine with 22 ground balls picked up this season. Michigan as a whole picks up a lot of ground balls so if the Terps put the ball on the ground a lot this can be a long game for them.

The Terps have found an unlikely hero to lead the offense in scoring lately in Jack Koras. Koras is a midfielder that originally was coming in on the second midfield line, but lately he has scored 10 goals in the last three games. Another key player for the Terps on offense is Kyle Long. This season, Long has 13 assists including eight in the last four games. Long uses his speed and dodging ability to get around players causing slides and players to get open. On defense, the Terps close defenders of Brett Makar, Ajax Zappitello, and Colin Burlace will have their hands full with the three headed monster the Wolverines have at attack. But with help from John Geppert, Dante Trader, and Eric Kolar on defense, they should not have many problems this weekend containing the Wolverine offense.

The Terps are 10-0 all time against Michigan and will look to keep their undefeated streak against the Wolverines alive as well as their 19 conference game winning streak with their last conference loss coming in 2019 to John’s Hopkins. Since head coach John Tillman took over the Terps, they are 144-15 when they score ten goals and are 118-11 when holding teams to less then ten goals.

Prediction: Look for the Terps to add to the 144 wins when scoring ten or more goals. I do think the Wolverines will have plenty of chance but freshman goalie Brian Ruppel will stay hot and the Terps defense will slow Zawada and Co down enough to get the win. I see it being 15-11 Terps.

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