Maryland men’s lacrosse misses NCAA Tournament for first time in 24 years

(Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun/TNS)

Maryland men’s lacrosse’s inclusion in the NCAA Division I Tournament has been a given for the past 22 postseasons.

No longer.

The Terps, who opened the season as the preseason No. 1 team in the country, were left out of the 18-team field Sunday night when the bracket was unveiled on ESPN. The last time they did not participate in the NCAA Tournament was in 2002 — a streak of 22 tournaments that was the third-longest in the sport’s history behind Johns Hopkins (41 from 1972 to 2012) and Syracuse (24 from 1983 to 2006).

Maryland lost out on what was believed to be two at-large spots in the postseason. Duke (9-4) and Yale (9-5) were rewarded by the selection committee instead of Maryland (7-6) and Harvard (9-5).

Reagan Bednar, a team spokeswoman, said coach John Tillman would address the media on Monday.

Maryland wasn’t simply a guest in the postseason. It had earned a top-eight seed and a home game in the first round in 18 of the past 22 tournaments, advanced to the Final Four 11 times, and played in the championship final nine times, capturing titles in 2017 and 2022.

But the Terps’ resume was not as strong as it had been in the past. Their 7-6 record ended a 22-year run of at least 10 wins in a season, and their six losses before the playoffs marked their most since the 2009 squad went 9-6 before going 1-1 in the tournament.

And Maryland had opportunities to strengthen its profile. It had seven chances against teams ranked in the top 10 in RPI — the selection committee’s favorite metric for assessing teams’ worthiness — and finished 1-6, which included dropping two meetings to Penn State, with the latest setback occurring in Thursday’s Big Ten Tournament semifinal.

A year after being omitted from the NCAA postseason, Johns Hopkins (9-5) drew an at-large spot, but not a top-eight seed in the field. The Blue Jays will visit No. 7 seed Cornell (11-4) in the first round on Saturday at 5 p.m. in Ithaca, New York.

With the Terps, Towson (losing, 13-11, to Stony Brook in Saturday’s Coastal Athletic Association Tournament final) and Loyola Maryland (falling, 14-7, to Army West Point in Sunday’s Patriot League title game) absent from the bracket, the Blue Jays are the only team from Maryland, marking the state’s fewest representatives since 2022 when the Terps were the only team in the bracket.