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.
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The Blue Hens were in the preseason 2022 national rankings and had lost only to Duke before being overwhelmed 18-8 at Michigan on March 5, a humbling defeat if there ever was one. A first-ever victory over Hopkins at Delaware Stadium March 18 was good for the record book and the egos. But the Blue Hens responded by losing their next three to Villanova and Massachusetts and Hofstra in their first two CAA games.
They have not lost since, as Delaware (13-5) takes a 7-game win streak into their quarterfinal bout with the No. 7-seeded Big Red (12-4).
“With adversity, we can all learn a lot of things about ourselves,” senior Kevin Lynch, a team captain and defender, said after practice this week. “It’s how you deal with it. For us, we were facing a big burden, we were facing elimination [from making the CAA playoffs] week after week. Dealing with that showed our true character.”
That was done, Lynch added, by “investing within ourselves, blocking all the outside noise out” and taking a backs-against-the-wall attitude.
Delaware will carry that same unified approach to Ohio Stadium, where a victory would send it to a semifinal vs. No. 3 seed Penn or No. 6 seed Rutgers on May 28 at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Connecticut. The title game is there May 30.
The matchup with Cornell is a reunion for DeLuca, who was a standout defender for the Big Red from 1995-98, when Cornell and Delaware had their only three previous meetings, and a team captain as a senior. He then was a Cornell assistant and associate head coach before becoming head coach before the 2011 season.
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DeLuca’s Cornell teams went 37-11, including 16-2 in the Ivy League, with 2011 quarterfinal and 2013 semifinal appearances in the NCAA Tournament. But in November of 2013, he was dismissed as coach two months after a team hazing incident following which the school shut down its fall season.
DeLuca has preferred not to rehash those events, preferring to characterize it as a chance to learn and grow. Many at the time felt the move was unjust, including Cornell players who expressed shock and dismay. Present Cornell coach Connor Buczek, its third since DeLuca left, was recruited by and played for DeLuca.
The 2022 Blue Hens faced an entirely different type of hardship than what their coach endured. But he has seen them react in the right way.
“We do talk a lot about what you do when you encounter adversity and failure and opposition,” DeLuca said, “how you respond to it and, like anything else, it takes practice. If you never see it, you’re just talking about it.
“As a coach and educator, one of the best experiences you can have is seeing the light bulb go off in the kids’ eyes. ‘Oh, that’s what you meant!’ ”
Delaware’s turnaround this spring included defender Tate Wasson’s late-season return from an injury that allowed Reed Kurtz to discard his long pole and go back to being a short-stick defender, where he is more comfortable and has excelled.
DeLuca said some of Delaware’s attacking midfielders have also successfully transitioned to that position after being attackmen in high school. They’ve become quite adept at scoring themselves and feeding the Hens’ explosive attack trio of J.P. Ward, Tye Kurtz and Mike Robinson, who has scored nifty behind-the-back goals in Delaware’s NCAA wins over Robert Morris and Georgetown.
Has DeLuca seen that light bulb he mentioned go off several times this month?
“Absolutely,” he said.
The Blue Hens will try to keep it flickering Sunday at Ohio State’s fabled “Horseshoe,” and keep the national spotlight shining upon them.
Have an idea for a compelling local sports story or is there an issue that needs public scrutiny? Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.
