Men’s lacrosse is a sport in which the University of Delaware can truly compete for a top-of-the-heap NCAA Division I championship, which the school has previously only won in field hockey (2016) and women’s lacrosse (1983).
Ben DeLuca suggested as much when he was hired as UD coach in May of 2017, succeeding Bob Shillinglaw, who 10 years before had guided the Blue Hens to championship weekend of the NCAA Tournament and a semifinal bout with eventual champ Johns Hopkins.
That 2007 UD team had been perilously close to not even making the Colonial Athletic Association playoffs before, after back-to-back league losses, it rallied for an electrifying 19-18 win at then-league member Villanova in mid-April. Momentum secured, Delaware didn’t lose again until that NCAA semifinal against Hopkins in front of 52,000-plus at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.
Fifteen years later, the Blue Hens step onto the field at Ohio Stadium in Columbus on Sunday at noon (ESPNU) aiming to get that far again. They’ll face Cornell in an NCAA quarterfinal with a team that, in similar fashion, has surmounted mid-season woes led by a coach well-versed in the art of overcoming adversity.