Maryland men’s lacrosse entered the 2023 season with veteran leaders on the defensive side, but its offense held question marks as its top-four point producers all graduated, leaving a hole on that side of the field.
Many of the Terps in their season-long starting lineup were players playing significant minutes for the first time in their collegiate careers. That inexperience doomed the Terps, culminating in a 16-15 loss to Army in the first round of the NCAA tournament, their earliest NCAA tournament exit since falling in the same round in 2013.
“You realize with so many young guys you feel like you are letting them down if you don’t prepare them,” coach John Tillman said prior to Maryland’s NCAA tournament battle against Army. “… Brett brought it up to me last night. There was one point in the game Saturday [against Michigan] he was the only guy on the field that played last year and we were playing in the Big Ten championship.”
After losing one game combined in the 2021 and 2022 campaigns, Maryland experienced a much rockier season in 2023, compiling a 10-6 record. The Terps’ six losses was the program’s most since suffering the same amount in 2012.
Mary;and’s offense the past two years hummed through Tewaaraton Award winners Jared Bernhardt and Logan Wisnauskas, who set new program records for points scored and helped reset the offense when Maryland struggled.
“We had the value of experience last year,” Tillman said following his group’s loss to Michigan in the Big Ten tournament championship. “We don’t have that right now.”
But no one stepped up to fill the shoes of the two program greats.
Attacker Daniel Maltz shined in 2021 in his first year as a starter, but was relegated to the bench in 2022 due to the multitude of offensive options at Tillman’s disposal. The senior made his return to the starting lineup in 2023 but failed to replicate his production from 2021, scoring only 38 points (28 goals, 10 assists), compared with 50 points (40 goals, 10 assists) in 2021.
Freshman attacker Braden Erksa excelled in his first season in College Park, leading the Terps in points in 2023 with 48 points (26 goals, 22 assists). But Erksa started slow, and didn’t come near the production that Bernhardt and Wisnauskas recorded in their careers at Maryland.
The Terps received a jolt from their second midfield line of sophomores Zach Whittier and Eric Spanos and senior Ryan Siracusa in April, who played significant minutes over the second half of the season. The trio combined for 33 points over the final seven games of the season, but all played more than they ever had entering this season in their collegiate careers.
Tillman was forced to use an influx of youth in his lineups, and the result was inconsistent performances on a week-by-week basis.
“You got to make the most of what you got,” Tillman said after Maryland’s Big Ten tournament victory over Rutgers. “… We have guys waiting and we have confidence in them. They just haven’t done it yet.”
Maryland’s youth and inexperience wasn’t limited to its offense, as an early-season injury to senior goalkeeper Logan McNaney inserted freshman Brian Ruppel into the cage as the Terps’ full-time starter on Feb. 25. Ruppel fared well over the heart of the campaign — recording a save percentage of .470 or better in eight of his first 11 outings — but struggled down the stretch, registering save rates of 36.4 and 23.8 percent in the final two games of the season.
The Terps’ youth gained valuable experience over the course of the 2023 campaign. Despite a poor overall result following the program’s 2022 national championship run, Maryland is still set up well to reach Memorial Day weekend in 2024.
