NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament 2012: Loyola Beats Maryland For Title

Maryland’s run to the national championship game of the 2012 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament featured a lot of stingy defense and timely scoring. Against Loyola (Md.) in Monday’s championship game, it was the Greyhounds, not the Terrapins, who got all of that, taking a 9-3 victory for their first national title.

Eric Lusby had four goals on the day for the Greyhounds, giving him a record 17 in the 2012 NCAA Tournament. Three came after halftime, as Loyola shut out Maryland 4-0 in the second half. The Greyhounds finished the game on a 7-0 unanswered run.

Maryland’s made a Cinderella run in the 2012 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament, going from being unseeded to making the NCAA Tournament final. But Loyola (Md.) has been on a Cinderella run all season, from being unranked and unheralded at the season’s outset to being the No. 1 national seed in the NCAA Tournament, and the Greyhounds are 30 minutes from finally getting that glass slipper to fit, leading Maryland 5-3 at the half.

Loyola got goals from Mike Sawyer, Eric Lusby and Davis Butts in the first half, and came back from a 3-2 deficit in the second quarter to take the lead on the Terrapins.

The NCAA men’s lacrosse national championship will be decided Monday when the Maryland Terrapins face off against the Loyola (Md.) Greyhounds.

Maryland advanced to the championship game with a 16-10 win over Duke. It is the second straight year Maryland has advanced to the national championship game; the Terrapins lost to Virginia 9-7 in the championship last year. The Terps’ return trip hasn’t been easy. They beat No. 7 seed Lehigh in the first round and No. 2 seed Johns Hopkins in the second round before beating No. 3 seed Duke in the semifinals.

Northwestern earned its seventh championship in eight seasons as they beat a surprise Syracuse squad in the championship game in Stony Brook, 8-6.

The final score was modestly close, only two goals, but the game was much less even. Northwestern controlled 10 of the first 11 draws and dominated possession, with Tewaaraton Award finalist Taylor Thornton notching two goals and two assists on the way to the victory.

The unseeded Maryland Terrapins will take on the top-seeded Loyola (Md.) Greyhounds in the 2012 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship Game on Monday. Despite the apparent mismatch, the Terps ride into Gilette Stadium with momentum after beating the No. 3 seed Duke Blue Devils, 16-10, on Saturday.

The Terps also beat the No. 2 seed Johns Hopkins Blue Jays in the quarterfinals, setting them up for a potential clean sweep of the tournament’s top three seeds.

Maryland, the Cinderella of the 2012 NCAA Tournament in men’s lacrosse, needed to knock off another top seed to get to the NCAA Tournament final. With a 16-10 win over No. 3 seed Duke on Saturday, the Terrapins did just that, advancing to their second consecutive championship game and setting up an all-Maryland affair in the final.

Drew Snider pumped in four goals for the Terps, Owen Blye added three, and Billy Gribbin and Kevin Forster each added two for a Maryland team that never trailed and led by two goals throughout the second half. After Duke closed to 10-8 early in the fourth quarter, the Terrapins responded with six straight goals in the next 11 minutes to put the game well out of reach.

Maryland’s men’s lacrosse team came into the NCAA Tournament Final Four as the only non-seeded team. After 30 minutes against Duke, the Terrapins have a 7-4 halftime lead on their ACC rivals, and are looking like a team that will play for a national title.

Maryland got two goals from Billy Gribbin and three assists from Joe Cummings in the first half, built 3-0 and 6-3 leads, and never trailed against a Duke team that couldn’t quite match the Terps’ aggressiveness.

Notre Dame went through a 20 minute stretch in the first half where they put only four shots on goal and committed six turnovers. But the Irish closed the half strong, scoring two goals in a six second stretch just before the two-minute mark. The second goal by Nicholas Beattie came right off the face-off and had the Irish sideline whipped into a frenzy. Loyola recaptured the momentum, however, by capitalizing on an ND turnover and burying a goal with two seconds remaining. Josh Hawkins charged up the middle and went to his left to fire an offspeed bouncer to put the Greyhounds back up 5-3.

In the second half, Notre Dame went another 20 minute stretch without a goal, putting up a bagel in the third quarter. The Irish finally broke through with just over seven minutes remaining in the game, taking a Loyola turnover the other way in transition for a Sean Rogers score. Less than a minute later, Westy Hopkins cut the lead to two by coming underneath and cutting across the front of the crease to make it 7-5. With momentum on the Irish side and despite losing almost every face-off, Runkel and the Greyhounds were up to the task over the final six minutes and salted away the win.

Maryland may be a lacrosse hotbed and a powerhouse in the sport -- this is their 21st appearance in the National Semifinals -- but this year comes as somewhat of a shock. The Terps have four losses on the year and didn’t earn a top-8 ranking at the end of the season, entering the NCAA Tournament unseeded. But they avenged an earlier loss on the season to Johns Hopkins in the quarterfinals and cemented their ticket to Foxborough.

These two teams met once earlier in the season, with Duke escaping with a 6-5 victory after Maryland brought a larger lead down to a single goal in the later minutes. So although the Terrapins are unranked, they’ve already beaten a higher seed and clearly aren’t completely overmatched against the Blue Devils.

Loyola has only lost one game all season -- and that was in overtime. But Notre Dame has played to its No. 4 seed, and after a victory over No. 5 Virginia, there’s no reason to believe the Fighting Irish can’t challenge the nation’s best team.

Loyola might think there’s not much left in its path: the only loss on the season came against Johns Hopkins, but the Blue Jays were dispatched by an unseeded Maryland squad in the quarterfinals, and the only other team that has given the team any trouble -- Denver, who pushed the Greyhounds to overtime in the ECAC tournament -- lost to Loyola earlier in the tournament by one point. But Notre Dame provides an interesting matchup; the Golden Domers haven’t had a bad year either, only losing twice, both by only a single point.