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Opening day of the 2026 NCAA Division I men's lacrosse season is Jan. 31.
Throughout the month of January, we'll pose three burning questions for each team ranked in the USA Lacrosse Division I Men's Preseason Top 20, presented by CWENCH Hydration, starting with No. 20 Michigan and finishing with No. 1 Maryland.
Join the conversation on social media @USALMag (IG/X/FB). Wrong answers only.
It took a while for the post-Logan McNaney era to arrive at Maryland.
OK, it took a long while. And after six seasons — one cut short by a pandemic (2020), another by a knee injury (2023), one that featured a national title (2022) and three more that ended with Memorial Day losses (2021, 2024 and 2025) — the page has finally turned on a college career defined by consistency, longevity and ubiquity.
“He’s not coming back?” coach John Tillman joked. “Wait a minute. I thought he was going to be here forever.”
Plenty of people beyond the Terrapins’ coaching staff felt McNaney was as much a College Park institution as the bronze statue of Testudo in front of McKeldin Library. But a familiar face is set to re-emerge as Maryland brings back a large group from the team that fell to Cornell in last year’s national title game.
Brian Ruppel started 13 games in 2023 after McNaney was injured, memorably turning in a wild sequence of point-blank saves in a victory at Virginia. He finished that season with a .484 save percentage, redshirted in 2024 and then logged about 20 minutes (and a .636 save percentage) over four appearances last year.
Nonetheless, Tillman repeatedly said that Ruppel created much more of goalie competition than outsiders would have suspected in the preseason last year. And now, as a fourth-year junior, it’s clearly Ruppel’s opportunity to entrench himself in the cage.
Perhaps he won’t make starts in six different seasons like McNaney, but he’s already made an impression on the rest of Maryland’s program. Now, he’ll get the chance to do so on a larger scale.
“In the day and age where kids don’t get what they want so they leave and go somewhere else, I give Brian a lot of credit,” Tillman said. “He just wanted to be at Maryland — competed, didn’t start, kept his head down and kept working and tried to become the starter and never stopped getting better and never stopped working. Who he is, his disposition, his raw ability, I think everybody has a lot of faith in Brian. That’s an area where we feel good.”
That’s probably not the best query, considering the Terps might not be the team in their own league leaning on portal acquisitions the most. (Ohio State, with its largely reconstructed offense, gets that honor.) Yet it’s no secret transfers could play humongous roles in College Park, and some were in the fold well before last season ended.
“It’s just finding the right guys,” Tillman said. “You get one year with these guys. You better make sure they know what they’re getting into, and you better make sure you know what you’re getting into because that can be really bad for your team and your culture. It’s not as easy as plug-and-play, and I think some people think that may be the case, but we’re not just going to bring in anybody because they’re a good player.”
Henry Dodge led Division I in faceoff percentage last year at Vermont, where he won 71.3 percent of his draws. How much success he enjoys against a deeper pool of competition will determine whether Maryland is roughly a break-even proposition at the X like last year (when it won 51.2 percent of its draws) or a possession-dominant menace.
Three Yale graduate transfers — defenseman Michael Alexander and attackmen Leo Johnson and Chris Lyons — arrive since they couldn’t use a fifth year of eligibility in the Ivy League, and all three could log heavy minutes. And former UMBC short-stick defensive midfielder Trey Fleece is also in the mix.
You get one year with these guys. You better make sure they know what they’re getting into, and you better make sure you know what you’re getting into.
John Tillman on bringing in transfers
Tillman and offensive coordinator Michael Phipps don’t lack for options. Attackmen Eric Spanos (36 goals, 19 assists) and Braden Erksa (35 goals, 15 assists) return, as does midfielder Zach Whittier (14 goals, 19 assists). Last season’s second midfield line — Elijah Stobaugh (10 goals, four assists), Jack Schultz (eight goals, six assists) and Aidan Aitken (five goals, four assists) — will contend for promotions.
And, of course, there’s Lyons, who had 62 goals as a sophomore in 2023 at Yale. He missed all of 2024 and came back to post 30 goals and 11 assists last spring. Johnson accrued 101 goals and 71 assists in three seasons with the Bulldogs.
“I think the question is who’s going to play where and what makes the most sense and who’s playing the best,” Tillman said. “I think it’s a little bit of a work in progress, only because we had some guys dinged up, so not everybody was necessarily playing together all fall.”
Lyons was basically shelved for the fall as he recovered from injury. Spanos was held out toward the end of those sessions. In an ideal world, the Terps would have seen how their full complement played off each other.
That had to wait until scrimmages in January.
“It created an opportunity to get more guys in, which was good, but it didn’t really allow us to say, ‘OK, this is exactly what we’re doing,’” Tillman said.
Put another way: who is this year’s Will Schaller? The defenseman was highly touted and developed over his first two seasons, then emerged as the latest top-tier anchor to Maryland’s close unit much as Brett Makar and Ajax Zappitello did earlier in the decade.
That figure this season could be senior long-stick midfielder AJ Larkin, who had four goals, two assists and 10 caused turnovers as a complement to the since-graduated Jack McDonald.
“Last year, I thought we had the best 1-2 combo in the country,” Tillman said. “I wouldn’t have traded those two guys for anybody. AJ being able to be with Jack and learn from Jack, that was a great model for him. Now it’s time for AJ to become the guy.”
It’s a question with multiple applications. The most obvious one is on offense, where the Terps had a string of attackmen with gaudy numbers for much of Tillman’s tenure. From Mike Chanenchuk to Matt Rambo to Connor Kelly to Jared Bernhardt to Logan Wisnauskas, it was easy to identify the central figure.
Yet in the three seasons since Maryland’s undefeated title run, Spanos is the only Terp with a 50-point season. It made him an obvious candidate for the program’s esteemed No. 1 jersey after it resided at the defensive end with Makar, Zappitello and McNaney the last three seasons.
It fits with more than just offense. A common thread between Maryland’s 2017 and 2022 championship teams was a roster filled with strong personalities. For a program coming off back-to-back Memorial Day losses, there’s undoubtedly urgency to take the last step, and who is stoking and tending to that internal fire matters.
“I think we’re still working on getting some guys comfortable being more of an alpha, being more of the vocal guy,” Tillman said. “I think sometimes that’s the type of thing people don’t realize. What they can potentially do skill-wise and with their athleticism is one thing. Who’s going to make sure that everyone’s doing the right things? Who’s going to keep this whole thing together?”
Patrick Stevens has covered college sports for 25 years. His work also appears in The Washington Post, Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook and other outlets. He's provided coverage of Division I men's lacrosse to USA Lacrosse Magazine since 2010.
