NCAA's No. 1 seed is no surprise

The Terrapin field hockey team gathered last night for a team dinner, eating tacos, chatting and laughing loudly with teammates.

The reason for the get-together was to watch the NCAA Tournament selection show. But if the Terps did not look like a team preparing to discover their postseason fate, that's because they weren't.

Unlike in past years, the No. 1 Terps (20-0), the only undefeated team in the country, had no reason to doubt their spot at the top of the NCAA Tournament bracket.

Senior midfielder Alexis Pappas said she preferred it that way.

"You're not nervous about whether you're going to make it or not or whether you're going to have a good bracket or not," Pappas said. "So I mean, we just go in excited, ready for some dinner and to watch the show."

Any butterflies for the Terps stemmed only from the fact that they appeared on the live selection show via a webcam set up on the conference table in Comcast Center, where the team met to hear the bracket announcement.

At first, midfielder Ameliet Rischen complained because she was seated right in front of the camera. But many of the Terps tried to get in front of the camera and waved wildly in a test run, thrilled to see themselves on the screen.

Pappas, also sitting front and center, enjoyed the spotlight like many of the Terps. But for her, the moment was tinged with sadness.

"Honestly, it's bittersweet. I had the best time of my life being a Terp," the senior said. "I've only lost, if everything goes right, eight times my whole career here."

Whether everything goes right depends on the teams the Terps face.

The team will take on unranked American (12-8) in the first round. The Terps beat the Eagles 3-0 in a defensive battle earlier this season and have seen them in the postseason often before. Coach Missy Meharg even had a suspicion the Terps would see the Eagles and went to scout their game yesterday against Lock Haven in Washington.

But as she told her team in a pep talk after the show, they need to treat the NCAA Tournament as the start of a whole new season.

"We might perceive that team to be better than this team," she said. "There's only one team we have to worry about and that we're going to concentrate on, and that's us."

In the second round, the Terps are set to face either No. 5 Connecticut or No. 10  Drexel, both unfamiliar opponents.

They cannot face an ACC opponent until the Final Four, but with only No. 9 Boston College on their side of the bracket, they likely would not face a conference rival until the championship game — both No. 2 Virginia and No. 3 North Carolina are on the opposite side of the tournament.

But with their success so far this season against top-level opponents such as the Cavaliers and Tar Heels, and seven seniors who have won the National Championship at least twice before, Meharg said she believes if the Terps team can stay focused, they have what it takes to make another postseason run.

Their intensity at practice today, even with the excitement of the selection show hanging over their heads, just reinforced her belief.

"They're really in the present," Meharg said. "They don't get too high or too low. They're right in check."

Back Brianna Davies said the Terps can attribute their even-keeled demeanor to the security they felt about their designation as the NCAA's team to beat.

"In some of the past years, we didn't really know where we would be playing at or what seed we were going to be," Davies said. "So it was nice knowing, or at least hoping, that we were going to be No. 1 because we were undefeated. It takes a lot of the stress off knowing that you are No. 1."

kyanchulis@umdbk.com