WASHINGTON – With the loss of Ryan Young to graduation, the Terps men’s lacrosse team lost not only a three-time All-American and 16 percent of their offense, but also their on-field quarterback.
A four-year starter, Young was the man behind the cage, dodging defenders to set his teammates up for easy goals.
Heading into 2012, it was unclear who would replace Young as the team’s on-field leader.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find one. Senior captain Joe Cummings scored his eighth career hat trick in Maryland’s 16-11 win over Georgetown Friday night.
“His Lacrosse IQ is so high. He knows where to be all the time. He’s our quarterback on the offense. He knows where people are supposed to be, knows where he’s supposed to be, he gets everything organized and he did a great job today,” said Junior All-American face-off specialist Curtis Holmes.
Cummings was quick to defer the credit to his coaches and teammates.
“I try to play within the system, play within the guys, and if I’m on the receiving end or presented with an opportunity to make a feed to a guy,” he said. “I just happened to be in that spot. It’s a credit to the other five guys on the field…It’s not one person scoring, it’s the whole offense scoring.”
And the whole offense did score. Ten different Terps notched goals in the team’s second win of the season.
Maryland was poised to run away with the game in the second quarter after Senior midfielder Landon Carr scored on a silky, smooth move.
Carr raced down the field full speed after picking up a ground ball on a face off. He spun around the defense effortlessly, creating just enough space to rifle a shot past Senior goal keeper CT Fisher to put the Terps up 7-2.
But the Hoyas responded with two goals of their own to make it 7-4 after the first 30 minutes of action. Fisher was benched at halftime.
Georgetown head coach Dave Urick said he had already planned to sit Fisher because of the senior goalie’s relative inexperience at that position and because the team had two other quality goalies on the bench.
“There was a question in our mind up until yesterday which guy was going to go. We have faith in three of our goalkeepers and we felt like CT was the guy to go with initially. But I think playing Jake [Haley, brother of the Terps’ Quinn Haley] was a good thing to do,” he said.
Maryland didn’t panic. Players said they remembered what their head coach told them all week long.
“Win the first five minutes. We felt like if we could do that, obviously getting up four makes everything different, if they close it to two, now they continue that momentum so we knew that first five minutes would be important,” John Tillman said.
“We wanted to come out in the second half and present ourselves with an opportunity to set the tone,” Cummings said.
They did a little better than win the next five minutes.
Maryland out-scored Georgetown 9-1 before the regulars were on the sidelines, giving the Terps a 16-5 advantage with six and a half minutes left to play.
Though the first two games of the season, Maryland has scored 28 goals, with 13 different players finding the back of the net. Tillman said he loves the depth of his team.
“We have no egos, I think everybody realized with what we lost last year, everybody was going to have to share and buy in and do their part,” Tillman said after the game.
Maryland (2-0), ranked fifth in the Nike Division 1 Poll, is now 10-2 all-time against their rival from the District and 5-0 playing the Hoyas in the nation’s capital.
They will face their first conference opponent, 8th ranked Duke, on Saturday, March 3rd at home at 1 p.m.