Sasho Cirovski still didn’t entirely grasp what his Maryland soccer team accomplished this season as he bounced from Dallas to Atlanta to Washington on Monday, a hectic day of travel following an incredible professional high.
The Terrapins were 24 hours removed from a 1-0 defeat of North Carolina that secured their second national title in four years. The hardware to commemorate the feat, a gleaming championship trophy, was still packed away in the middle of the afternoon.
And unlike the 2005 ascent, Maryland was not an unquestioned favorite with a dynamite offense, the nation’s best player up front, a freshman wunderkind goalkeeper and oodles of established talent in between. This time around, there was far less certainty, especially after an ugly 5-3 humbling at Clemson on Oct. 3 dropped the Terps to 7-3 and evoked memories of last year’s overtime loss to Bradley in the NCAA tournament.
“There was tremendous doubt we would have any chance to even contend for a championship,” Cirovski said. “It was one of those games when everything went right for Clemson. But that Clemson loss combined with the Bradley loss showed us a capacity for the principles of the game to crush you if you don’t pay attention to the details.”
Maryland averted such sloppy moments the rest of the way. It also didn’t lose again.
The Terps (23-3) finished the year on a 16-game winning streak, collecting a school record for victories along the way. But unlike so many of Cirovski’s best teams in the past, this was a defense-first group.
The Clemson loss, distasteful as it was, provided the crucible for Maryland to figure out precisely what sort of team it would become. It was a defeat that forced the Terps to look inward if they were to ensure they would be playing on the final weekend of the season.
That meant fortifying the defense. Freshman goalkeeper Zac MacMath matured. The athletic back line grew stronger. And Maryland’s offense, with a freshman and a redshirt sophomore coming off a year lost to injury up front, summoned just enough flair to collect six 1-0 victories in the final eight games.
The Terps outscored opponents 29-6 after the Clemson setback and yielded only one goal in eight games while winning the ACC and NCAA tournaments. Even the 2005 team didn’t produce that double, surpassing even Cirovski’s lofty standards.
“I’m amazed,” said Cirovski, whose Terps recorded a school-record 15 shutouts. “This team has exceeded my expectations.”
Not long ago, it was fair to wonder just when the Terps would break through for their first outright championship. Cirovski arrived at Maryland in 1993 and took a once woebegone program to four NCAA semifinals in a dozen seasons.
He sagely offered reminders that many of the sport’s best coaches of the past - Indiana’s Jerry Yeagley and Virginia’s Bruce Arena among them - needed about a decade to collect a championship before more followed. The same happened at Maryland, where Cirovski and the Terps withstood the early departures of forward Robbie Rogers and keeper Chris Seitz (key players who both would have been seniors this season had they not turned pro) and still won a second championship three years later.
“There’s a learning curve and culture of confidence,” Cirovski said. “It’s built over time. We have that now.”
Regardless of defections, it probably will remain that way, too. Maryland and Indiana are the only programs to win multiple national championships in the past decade, and the Hoosiers haven’t reached the semifinals since their 2004 title.
There’s an argument to be made that the Terps are the nation’s pre-eminent program. Regardless of that claim, they still produced a season few teams anywhere - including College Park - can easily replicate.
“I think that’s for other people to say,” Cirovski said. “But I think this team’s put together a year that’s a gold standard for Maryland soccer.”
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