The inaugural Big Ten tournament in men's lacrosse is already scheduled for April 30 and May 2 at Maryland's Byrd Stadium. So getting homefield advantage in the conference tournament is out of the equation.
But coach John Tillman said there is plenty of motivation for the No. 3 Terps (11-1 overall and 3-0 league) when they visit No. 11 Ohio State (10-3, 3-0) on Saturday.
"For us, it's a chance to play a really good team and see where we are, kind of get a measuring stick," Tillman said Tuesday. "[Ohio State] is playing great right now, it's a top 10 program, where are we? It's a conference game. One of our goals is to win our conference. So it's important there. Any team that's in a conference, one of your goals is to win that. There's a regular season that you'd like to win.
"We hope that every year, a conference championship is something that we can chase, and you're going to try to pursue it, and that's still in front of us. I'm sure they're thinking the same thing. So I'm sure it's significant on both sides."
The team is looking to join Maryland women's lacrosse, men's soccer, women's basketball and field hockey as programs that captured regular-season championships in their first seasons in the Big Ten. The Terps can clinch a share of the title with a victory against the Buckeyes.
Saturday's game will be the seventh edition of the Showdown in the Shoe, which hosts a lacrosse game before an Ohio State spring football game. An NCAA-record 31,078 fans watched the Buckeyes defeat Air Force in 2010. Last year, Ohio State routed Michigan before an announced crowd of 17,641 with a reported 31,000 fans in the stands at the end of the game.
Tillman said playing in a hostile environment shouldn't be new for Maryland, which played last spring at Michigan's The Big House and Syracuse's Carrier Dome.
"I'm hoping that some of those experiences can help get our guys ready for something [where] the atmosphere could be different," he said. "We'll try to get a little bit better handle on how to prepare our guys, what they might be walking into on Saturday. It's obviously a historic place for football. Their football team obviously had a great year last year.
"We've just got to make sure that we remember that once we're on the field, it's fundamentals, it's playing Maryland lacrosse, it's doing the things that we've been trying to do all year against a really good team. We can control what we can control. It goes back to just doing what we've done in practice all year."