Penn State lacrosse to face Maryland in Big Ten semifinals

After a long wait, the Nittany Lion's men's lacrosse team finally know their semifinal opponent. They will be facing the Maryland Terrapins after the Terps won away at SHI Stadium against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. This will be a matchup against two teams that met in the regular season and finished with identical conference records at 7-5.

The last time these two teams met, it was a defensive minded game that saw Penn State dominate the middle quarters of the game, keeping the Terps at bay for over 35 minutes. One of the standout performers from that matchup was freshman goalkeeper Preston Hawkins, who made 14 saves, a career high in the game. The Terps cannot afford for that to happen again against a smothering Penn State defense.

Still, if there's one way the Terrapins can stick around is their possession based style of play. It is all predicated upon the dominance of faceoff specialist Henry Dodge, who is third in the nation across his career in faceoff winning percentage. If he can control the faceoff X, it can stop Penn State from going on scoring surges, much like they did late in the first matchup.

Key players for the Nittany Lions will be the upperclassmen in redshirt senior Luke Walstrum, who was the leading point scorer in the last game and Mac Hobbs, who scored two goals in the outing. On the defensive side of things, Jon King, Ryan O'Connor and will look to frustrate Eric Spanos yet again. Spanos is one of the big frontrunners for the prestigious Tewaaraton Award, college lacrosse's highest honor.