Postgame Quotes

No. 9 Maryland 11, No. 10 Princeton 4

Head Coach John Tillman

Opening statement

“Obviously I am proud of our guys to get a win over a really good Princeton team. Big third quarter, coming out of the locker room I give our guys a lot of credit. I think a lot of it started with Charlie [Raffa] at the face-off X doing a great job, he and wings getting us multiple possessions and then the offense getting into the flow. They really shared the ball, were willing to make the extra pass, played with a lot of poise, and Coach Reppert did a really good job with them and I think that was a big part of the game, just that 6-1 run in the third. Defensively Coach Conry did a great job with the game plan again. Kyle [Bernlohr] was great in goal but just the glue down there, Matt Dunn and Casey Ikeda do such a great job of keeping everything together. Those seven guys, including the goalie, have done a really good job and if we can get those guys in those situations, we feel very confident that we can have a lot of success.”

On Maryland's defense

“We have so much respect for Princeton. We've watched what they've done all year. I think in the first half when we needed to play lengthy possessions, the guys were disciplined. We kind of shot ourselves in the foot our first two times we had the ball on offense, we actually the ball away and we had to play long periods. Give Princeton credit, they were really disciplined; really patient, and we just didn't have a lot of possessions in the first half. When we needed to dig in, the guys really dug in. There was one time we failed to clear, we had four short sticks out there, and we got it done and we saw it as a really good victory for us. We didn't have all of your poles on and we still found a way to get a good stop. I thought Kyle just continued as the game went on to just get more confident. We'll see how it goes moving forward but I think it is a good confidence builder for those guys just knowing how talented Princeton is.”

On Princeton

 “They just do a good job with what they do. The big thing we wanted to try to do was get them into those settled situations. I think last week they got four man-up goals so they are excellent there. They also generated face-off goals where the ball was loose and they were able to get behind their opponent and generate some goals, and I think that is six right there. We wanted to make sure we got them into those situations, we wanted to play good on-ball defense, we had to defend picks very well as they do such a good job with that, and we had to know that personnel and know what they're strengths were and what they were trying to do. Good on-ball discipline but also off-ball we just really needed to be solid there and I thought the guys communicated there very well.”