Maryland Posts Workmanlike Effort in 13-5 Win Over Air Force

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — John Tillman tends to draw from the experience-is-the-best-teacher school of thought, and the Maryland coach has amassed plenty of experience of playing at home as a high seed in the NCAA tournament.

With a date with play-in winner Air Force, Tillman could bring up memories of three-goal defeats of Bryant (2017) and Robert Morris (2018) that were far from decided at halftime after those teams advanced out of the opening round.

A visit from a service academy offered the option of bringing up a loss to Army in the first round just two seasons ago, let alone Tillman’s extensive experience as a Navy assistant early in his career.

The second-seeded Terps may have heard about those cautionary tales, but they ensured Sunday’s game would never be mentioned in that context. Maryland scored on the game’s first two possessions and never lost the lead in a 13-5 rout before 2,253 at SECU Stadium.

“Just showing up isn’t enough,” Tillman said. “You have to execute. You have to be detail-oriented. You have to play hard. You don’t get anything. You have to earn it. Our guys have been pretty responsive all year with that.”

Eric Spanos had a hat trick by halftime and finished with a career-high six goals for the Terps (12-3), who advanced to a quarterfinal next Sunday against unseeded Georgetown (12-4) in Annapolis, Md.

Spanos is the third Terp to post a six-goal day in the NCAA tournament, joining Ed Mullen (seven against Navy in the 1976 semifinals) and Jared Bernhardt (six against Vermont in the 2021 first round).

“Last game of the season in our stadium, it’s definitely meaningful to go out there and produce,” Spanos said.

Josh Yago had a goal and an assist, and Caelan Driggs scored two goals for the Falcons (9-8) to give him 60 for the season — the first in the program’s modern (since 1994) era to reach 50 goals, let alone 60.

Air Force came out in a zone, and Maryland responded by getting goals from Daniel Kelly and Spanos in the game’s first two possessions.

The Falcons were able to keep the game at a reasonable pace, something Maryland rarely has qualms with — even if in this case, it kept things close for nearly a half. Driggs’ first goal brought Air Force within 4-2 in the middle of the second quarter, only for the Terps to soon rattle off three scores in less than two minutes and take a 7-2 edge into the break.

“The game just always kind of seemed choppy in general, and it was hard to get a flow,” Tillman said.

Spanos scored two goals early in the third quarter and tacked on another with 17 seconds left in the period to make it 12-2.

Air Force had a scoreless streak of 23 minutes, 10 seconds that spanned parts of the last three quarters before Yago scored his goal with 13:27 to go.

The Falcons are hardly the first play-in winner to struggle with one of the tournament favorites on a relatively quick turnaround. Since opening-round games were instituted in 2014, the teams coming out of them are 3-11 in the first round.

And Sunday doesn’t diminish what Air Force did to turn around its season over the last five-plus weeks. The Falcons were 2-7 at the start of April, including a loss in their Atlantic Sun opener at Jacksonville, and then rattled off a seven-game winning streak to earn their first NCAA berth since 2017.

Air Force followed with a 14-9 thumping of Robert Morris in Wednesday’s opening round, the program’s first postseason victory since 2014 and just its second ever. The team didn’t return to Colorado between games, a prudent choice that ensured travel wouldn’t be an added problem against the Terps.

Maryland provided enough challenges by itself. The Terps largely bottled up Driggs and Yago, who broke a tie with Brandon Dodd (2022) for the most points in a season in the Falcons’ modern history and finished with 72 for the year.

With three seeded teams — No. 4 Ohio State, No. 7 Duke and No. 8 North Carolina — losing in the weekend’s first five games, Tillman had one of the first round’s most enviable headaches. NCAA rules permit only 32 players to dress for tournament games, and all of them cracked the box score in the lopsided game.

The Terps used three faceoff men, and goalie Logan McNaney’s 10-save afternoon ended with nearly 10 minutes to play.

“There were some guys in our locker room that work so incredibly hard, and you have to tell them, ‘I can’t put you in,’” Tillman said. “You’re not trying to score goals. You just want to reward those kids for their efforts. I realize they have rules for a reason, but it’s just really hard. It just counters what we preach and what we’re all about.”

The upshot, of course, is Maryland extended its season another week. It got the workmanlike outing it wanted without generating any lessons to be invoked in future years. Call it a fair trade in the opening weekend of any NCAA tournament.