Preview: Maryland men’s lacrosse readies for top-five clash against Virginia

No. 5 Maryland men’s lacrosse (5-1) hosts No. 3 Virginia (5-1) on Saturday in a top-five clash. The Cavaliers make their first trip to College Park since 2014.

The Terps had a bounce back win last weekend 14-13 in overtime against Brown. Maryland played from behind for the majority of the game, not taking its first lead until in the fourth quarter.

Maryland leading scorer Braden Erksa was held to zero goals and one assist in the first half. But the sophomore attacker found success after halftime, scoring five goals — including three in the fourth quarter.

Senior attacker Daniel Maltz also put together a season-best performance for the Terps’ offense, scoring four goals on nine shots. Maltz scored three first-half goals and provided the game-winning goal in overtime, assisted by Erksa.

Faceoff specialist Luke Wierman spent the game on the sidelines in uniform. Coach John Tillman revealed postgame that Wierman was ‘nicked up’ from the loss to No. 2 Notre Dame, but there was nothing serious.

Junior Shea Keethler and freshman Sean Creter took over faceoff duties in Wierman’s absence, with Keethler seeing the majority. The junior won 12-of-20 faceoffs while Creter won just 1-of-10.

“I know [Creter] was disappointed but he’s been working his butt off and everybody still has a lot of confidence in him,” Tillman said, “Shea, super proud of him. Shea’s worked his butt off as well. He’s put the time in so it was great to see him battle in there.”

Maryland will hope to have Wierman back this weekend as it continues its homestand against another top five team in Virginia.

The Terps visited the Cavaliers in 2023 and took home a 14-13 overtime win. The result was then-ranked No. 1 Virginia’s first loss of the season.

Similar to Maryland, Virginia already has a handful of ranked wins this season. The Cavaliers started the season 3-0 with ranked wins at the time over No. 8 Michigan, No. 17 Richmond and No. 20 Ohio State. The lone loss this season came against No. 7 Johns Hopkins.

Leading Virginia in goals is attacker Payton Cormier, with 24. The graduate student scored seven goals in last week’s win against Towson to tie his career high. Cormier has scored five or more goals in three of the six games this season.

“They’re really good with picks. They’re either gonna get leverage off picks or get switches that’ll force you to support. If you don’t slide at the right time, they’re gonna get good shots,” Tillman said. “They’ve got great inside guys like [Cormier]… he just shows you, you better cover him up. He shows that he can generate a lot of offense.”

Protecting the net is junior goalkeeper Matthew Nunes. Nunes has a .543 save percentage and allows just over 11 goals per game this season. His best outing came against Ohio State, when he recorded 17 saves and allowed just seven goals.

Junior midfielder Anthony Ghobriel takes a majority of faceoffs, winning 49-of-81 (60%). Ghobriel, a transfer from Navy, missed two games in early March due to injury but returned last week against Towson.

Maryland has three straight wins over Virginia and has a chance to make it four on Saturday at 3 p.m. at SECU Stadium.