COLLEGE PARK — It's no coincidence that the Maryland women's lacrosse team on Sunday followed arguably its worst game of the season with one of its best.
Nine days after falling to Ohio State to end their 27-game winning streak, the top-ranked Terps showed they'd used the time since to work on fixing some of the cracks in their facade, and looked every bit the defending national champions in a 19-8 win over visiting Massachusetts in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Paced by four goals each from Kelly McPartland and Megan Whittle (McDonogh), the Terps outshot UMass, 37-11, dominated draw controls (22-7) and drew 30 fouls — 23 in the first half alone — against a defense struggling to keep up with their speed.
While losing might not be the preferred route to improvement head coach Cathy Reese said it did the job.
"It causes you as a coach to re-evaluate some things," Reese said. "I think we've had some games this season where we haven't played great, but we're still winning. This was a chance for us to really sit down and have a lot of discussions as a team about areas in which we need to improve. It was also some good motivation for us moving forward."
Top-seeded Maryland (18-1) advances to the NCAA quarterfinals next Sunday at noon in College Park, where the team will face eighth-seed Northwestern, a 16-11 winner over Notre Dame in the other half of the bracket.
Maryland handled Northwestern, 16-5, on the road in March.
To get another shot, the Terps first had to survive an offensive flurry in the game's opening minutes against a UMass team that entered the day ranked No. 2 in Division I scoring defense.
Both teams, in fact, started quickly offensively, each scoring off their first three draw controls. All told, the teams tallied six goals in the first 4:02 of what was expected to be more of a defensive battle.
After outlasting UMass's initial burst of energy, however, the Terps began to tighten defensively. A free position by Brooke Griffin (South River) 6:39 into the game gave them a lead they would never relinquish, as they held the Minutewomen without a goal for the next 20:20.
When Mattie Meredith (Roland Park) put in a one-timer off a high-arcing pass from Taylor Cummings — who on Thursday was named one of five finalists for the Tewaararon Award — the Minutewomen had allowed more goals (six) by midway through the first half then their per-game season average.
"I think we struggled in a lot of areas [against Ohio State], and one of them was scoring goals," Reese said. "Today we were 19 for 37 [in shots], and that's … where we want to be. It was just really us coming together as a team and playing to each other's strengths."
To a large extent, it also was about simply keeping the ball away from UMass (19-2).
Led by Cummings, the Terps won 19 of 23 draw controls after splitting the first six to start the game. It was the biggest key in a 14-3 mid-game run.
"I think it came down to ball possession," UMass coach Angela McMahon said. "There was a little stretch of the game there when we didn't have the ball for probably 10-15 minutes, and that allowed them to go on a run. With a team as talented as Maryland, they can score goals very quickly, and that's exactly what happened."
Now, the challenge for Maryland will be keeping the momentum going into the later rounds of the tournament. And that starts with learning from their mistakes.
Or, perhaps, putting them out of mind.
"That's in the past. We can't go back, we can't change it. We're just moving forward," McPartland said. "I still don't think we're playing our best lacrosse. I think we have a lot more to work on, and there's a lot more to come from us."