May 11, 2003

Recap| Final Stats

Terrapins Head Coach Dave Cottle
On the performance of Mike Mollot and the second-midfield:
"We played our second midfield more than our first. When Mike [Mollot]'s on the first midfield, usually we play the first a lot. Today, the second midfield was effective and we just wanted to get Mike on the field, so we played second midfield a lot and Mike played attack."

On Ohio State's performance and late rally:
"I think they have a good team. I thought going into it we had the toughest first-round draw of the top four teams ... I wanted to get out of the first half without them scoring, because ... if you haven't scored, then you get tighter. Then all of a sudden, they make a play, and it's 6-2. Then, they get an extra-man goal and it's 6-3. Then we thought there's a push - our guy gets knocked down from behind - now we're in a battle."

On the Terrapins' overall performance:
"The thing about our team was that they kept playing. I thought Danny McCormick was outstanding in the cage and I thought when we needed goals, our four seniors [on] the second line group stepped up ... all four of them had goals and then Mike Mollot helped tremendously on the offensive end."

On the Terrapin defensive strategy:
"You have to give credit to our defense. Early, we were playing defense the whole time they held the ball, [which] wore us down. In turn, we had to hold the ball back to rest the defense, so it slowed the pace of the game down."

Senior attacker Mike Mollot
On his fourth quarter goal:
"I think it pretty much sealed the game for us. We have the best defense in the country. I didn't think they were going to score two goals [in the last minute]."

On Maryland's slow-down gameplan:
"I think we were playing our normal offense as well. We were just trying to give our defense a break. They had a good gameplan, but we have the best defense in the country and we were just trying to slow the game up. You're not going to score too many six-on-six goals against our defense."

On Ohio State's fourth quarter rally:
"I've seen it happen before. I thought we got a little dumb at the end. They weren't forcing us to keep it in the box and I thought we could have held it a little longer, but we got away with a 'W' and that's all that matters."

Ohio State coach Joe Breschi
On his team's comeback efforts:
"It's tough to say what we would have done differently. Maybe [getting] a few more goals early would have been nice."

On the Buckeyes' strategy:
"We have not played zone since the third game of the season and I thought that would give them trouble. Our focus was to play a little bit of zone, change up some zone looks, and make [Maryland] work for their opportunities offensively. They're very potent offensively, but they're very patient. I thought if we played some zone and switched up our looks, we would give them trouble.

"Our goal was not to slow the game down. Our goal was to invert, which we have not done the entire season. We tried to give them a different offensive look as well, just to change it up ... We had some opportunities. We hit a few pipes, [Maryland's] goalie made eight or nine saves in the first half. If a couple of those go in, it might be a little bit tighter at halftime. The zone basically slowed the game down. When we invert, we want to be patient on our looks, but attack the goal."

On the Buckeyes' near successful comeback:
"Basically, your backs are against the wall. It's 6-1 and you have to shoot, so maybe we were taking advantage of our opportunities, and not waiting for the perfect look like we were early and we started to press a little bit. Things started going our way, the momentum started to shift ... and we just kept rolling with it."

On the Terrapin defense:
"When you look at their close defense, there isn't a better group in the country and they played great. I was as impressed with their goalie play as with their three defensemen in the front ... They did a nice job of shutting the short stick and going after us in the third quarter, but we still hung around."