Penn State Guts Out 8-6 Victory Over Maryland in B1G Semis

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Even by the Big Ten’s defense-first standards, Penn State’s 8-6 victory over Maryland in Thursday’s conference semifinals was no one’s idea of a work of art.

That didn’t mean it was devoid of masterful moments.

Hunter Aquino scored three goals, and short-stick defensive midfielder Jon King stuck a feed from long pole Ryan O’Connor off a faceoff win to silence a brief Terrapin run in the fourth quarter as the second-seeded Nittany Lions scrapped their way into a Big Ten title game meeting with top-seeded Johns Hopkins on Saturday.

“You’re just hoping at this time of the year, seniors will rise above or step up and play like Ryan did on that play,” Tambroni said. “He happened to flip the ball to Jon King, who’s gone through a tremendous amount as a player for us, losing his mom last year, and he just continues to be persistent and resilient and a leader of our team. I just couldn’t feel any better for him scoring the game-winner.”

Preston Hawkins made eight saves, and the faceoff tandem of Colby Baldwin (6 of 10) and Reid Gills (5 of 8) combined to help the Nittany Lions (8-5) prevent the Terps (7-6) from generating instant offense from the X.

Not that there were many opportunities to do so.

Penn State had the better of play at the defensive end, limiting Maryland to a half-dozen goals for the second time this season. And as much as there were glimmers of the Nittany Lions’ considerable offensive ability, they also committed 19 turnovers.

That still didn’t stop Penn State from beating the Terps for the second time this season after doing so just twice in the teams’ previous 45 meetings dating back to 1924. (The Nittany Lions claim two other victories in the 1910s, before Maryland recognized a varsity team.)

“We just knew we just needed to find a way, and it didn’t have to look pretty, and it certainly didn’t,” Tambroni said. “But it was enough to get us over the top.”

It was a familiar outing for the Terps, whose offense sputtered far too frequently this season. The diagnosis Thursday night was a simple one: Maryland couldn’t run by anyone, and its starting midfield mustered one point (an Elijah Stobaugh assist on an extra-man goal) and two shots.

“Six goals is just not good enough,” said coach John Tillman, whose team is 1-5 when scoring less than 10 times this season. “I have to do a better job of helping those guys and putting them in spots to win. That’s on me.”

It’s possible that aid won’t be applied until the fall, as Maryland sits in a precarious position entering Sunday’s announcement of the 18-team NCAA tournament field. The Terps last missed the postseason in 2002, the final year of the sport’s 12-team bracket configuration. It was also the last full season Maryland did not record at least 10 victories.

The Terps own a triple-overtime victory over Virginia, as well as defeats of Ohio State and Loyola. They played their usual tough schedule, though the inability to reschedule an opening-week postponement at Richmond looms larger than anticipated now.

There’s little Maryland can do in the next 72 hours besides monitor how other borderline tournament teams — Harvard, Virginia and Yale — fare and whether Richmond can polish off an Atlantic 10 title and preserve an at-large spot in the field for someone else.

“It’s really out of our hands,” Tillman said. “It just is what it is. I’m not a guy who’s trying to root for anybody. It’s like Sundays in the fall. You have teams you pull for, but no one from their TV sets is going to make a difference. It’s kind of in God’s hands. Whatever happens, happens. We just have to deal with the consequences because we didn’t do enough to determine our own fate. That’s just the reality of it.”

Penn State appeared in firm control up 6-3 after Liam Matthews’ extra-man goal with 11:01 remaining. But the Terps scored twice within a little more than two minutes, with Jack Schultz and Braden Erksa combining to get the margin to 6-5 with 6:27 left.

There was never a chance to knot the game. O’Connor slickly corralled a ground ball and slung it across to King, a converted offensive player who led the country in scoring at Utah’s Corner Canyon High School in 2021 and was perfectly comfortable stinging it past Brian Ruppel (five saves) to re-establish a cushion.

“We do stuff in practice so we know it’ll translate to games, and our coaches have so much faith to execute those plays,” Aquino said. “Right when I saw OC flip the ball, I knew Kinger was coming down and letting it rip.”

A similar dynamic unfolded in the closing minutes. Eric Spanos scored his second goal of the night for Maryland, only for Penn State to win the ensuing faceoff and get an Andrew Beard goal with 90 seconds remaining to seal it.

With that, the mercurial Nittany Lions moved closer to sealing their own place in the postseason. Maybe they’ve already done so, maybe they haven’t. With a weird resume highlighted by victories over Cornell and Princeton yet somehow also includes losses to Michigan, Navy and Villanova, it’s hard to accurately peg how they’ll be evaluated.

Two things are certain: Tambroni has no interest in reading bracket-related tea leaves, and they won’t matter for Penn State if it beats Hopkins to earn the Big Ten’s automatic bid.

“Since [practice began] Jan. 6, we’ve just not looked at anything,” Tambroni said. “I don’t know where we are or what it looks like. I’ve heard there was a lot on the line tonight, but we have our hands full.”