After Maryland pulled away from Big Ten archrival Johns Hopkins for an 11-8 victory despite a 5-of-22 performance on faceoffs, the team got a bit of good news Monday.
Freshman Austin Henningsen, who had won 62.3 percent (99-of-159) of his draws and collected 43 ground balls in his first 10 games, returned to practice Monday for the No. 3 Terps (12-2 overall and 5-0 in the conference). Although coach John Tillman is optimistic the faceoff specialist, who has sat out the last four contests because of a leg injury, will play in Thursday's Big Ten tournament semifinal against No. 18 Penn State (6-8, 2-3), there is some concern about his effectiveness after a lengthy layoff.
"I think what we have to figure out is, it's been a while since he's been out there," Tillman said Tuesday morning during his weekly conference call. Henningsen has not played since an 11-10 overtime win at Penn State on April 10.
"Just because he's back and practicing, does that mean he's the best guy right now? Do we think he might be a little bit rusty when it comes to the games? Also, we've got to factor in where we are in the year and realize if he's not as good as maybe the other guys because of some rust or he's just not quite there in terms of being able to do everything that he needs to do, then we've got to give the nod to the other guys. But we're prepared to play him on Thursday."
Maryland threw three players at Blue Jays senior Craig Madarasz, who tied a career high with 17 faceoff wins and picked up a game-high nine ground balls. Tillman repeated his belief that the Terps won't win another contest with a 5-of-22 showing on faceoffs.
"If you give a great team like Hopkins that many opportunities, you're going to be in trouble and certainly Penn State as well," he said. "So that's something we've kind of looked at and broken down the film and looked at ways to get better. It was a combination of things. First, you have to give Hopkins credit. I thought their faceoff guy was really good. He was on the whistle, he looked great, and then on top of that, I thought their wing play was good. The faceoffs have been a strength, and we just didn't do a great job. So now we've got to just look at what we're doing and clean some things up and get back to work and try to get better there."