Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

The Terrapin women's lacrosse team has had an Achilles' heel throughout the season, and in the ACC tournament, it was struck.

The Terps have struggled in second halves during the season, but dominant first halves propped the Terps up to a 15-1 record entering Sunday's ACC championship game against Virginia. Then, it finally caught up to them.

This continuing pattern has stumped the Terps all season, but they have not been able to pinpoint the cause of their second-half slumps.

"If I knew, then we wouldn't be having those problems," coach Cathy Reese said.

The Terps were outscored 9-2 in second halves in the tournament, but they were still within one goal of winning the championship.

"In the second half, we came out, and we just didn't finish on a lot of our shots," Reese said. "We had some good opportunities, but Virginia's goalie played outstanding. It is what it is."

The Terps blew an 8-3 lead Sunday. And while they slumped, the Cavaliers outscored the Terps 7-1 the rest of the way to extend the Terps' ACC championship drought to five seasons.

"We weren't as disciplined in the second half and turned the ball over when we really needed to have possession," sophomore midfielder Caitlyn McFadden said. "We let them back into it."

The Terps' second-half woes nearly kept them out of the ACC championship game. They raced out to a 6-1 halftime lead on North Carolina in the semifinals, but the Terps were shut out in the second half. The Terps were able to scrape by due to their first-half lead, as they had done all season long.

But things fell apart Sunday.

Virginia dominated the second half in every phase of the game. The Cavaliers took six more shots than the Terps, collected five more ground balls and forced two more turnovers. The most telling sign of the Cavaliers' dominance was their ability to collect draw controls when it counted. Virginia collected both overtime draws against Terp senior midfielder Dana Dobbie, who leads the nation in draw controls.

The Terps' second-half struggles were compounded by fouls. The Terps committed 11 more fouls than the Cavaliers, which resulted in three goals off free-position shots. The Terps also collected five yellow cards and had to play man down for six minutes.

"We did a lot of things that we could control, and there were things that we couldn't control, and we just focused on those too much," senior midfielder Kelly Kasper said. "We have to focus on what we can do and what's in our control and not worry about everything else that's going on."

The Terps will need to address their issues and pick themselves up off the mat in a hurry, because they will be playing Princeton on Wednesday night in a game that could decide a top-four seed in the NCAA tournament.

"The way to look at it is the season isn't over yet," Reese said. "The bottom line is we can't sit around and harp on it. We have a big game Wednesday against Princeton, which is a really huge game for us at this point."

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