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Although Maryland's baseball team won a midweek game against James Madison and swept Big Ten foe Nebraska and while the softball team won two of three on the road at Indiana including a game in which Erin Pronobis whacked home runs on three consecutive at bats going 7-12 with seven RBI and seven runs scored for the weekend (or Shannon Bustillos who was 8-13 with four runs and eight RBI for the three games) the only sports in which the Terps had players the conference deemed worthy of a B1G Player of the Week Award were men's and women's lacrosse. All three Terps Casey Ikeda for the men and Megan Douty and Taylor Cummings for the women are repeat winners.
Casey Ikeda
The April sixth award is the fourth time in eight weeks Ikeda has claimed the Defensive Player of the Week honor and the seventh time a Terrapin has been feted. Of course, when you're a member of a defensive unit that concedes 4.80 goals per game (a level that would be second best in NCAA history), you and your teammates should be on the receiving end of multiple awards.
Ikeda, who is on the Tewaaraton Award Watch List, picked up a ground ball, and caused two turnovers in the Terps' 12-5 win over Penn State. The senior also triggered two transition attacks that led to Maryland goals and was credited with an assist, his third of the season, on one of them.
Megan Douty
En route to earning her second B1G Defensive Player of the Week, Douty centered a Maryland defense that gave up a total of eight goals in the Terrapins' two wins over Georgetown and Rutgers. Maryland leads the conference and is fourth nationally giving up just 6.17 goals per game.
In the two games, Douty gathered up five ground balls - three against Georgetown and two against Rutgers - and caused a pair of turnovers in each contest. The senior defender, who was a Tewaaraton Award finalist in 2014 and is on the Watch List again in 2015, last won a B1G weekly award on February 23rd. A Maryland player has won the award in six of the last seven weeks and each of the last four.
Taylor Cummings
For the third consecutive week and fourth time overall, Maryland's Taylor Cummings has claimed the Big Ten Women's Lacrosse Offensive Player of the Week. This is a noteworthy accomplishment in and of itself but sometimes it's necessary to look at a situation from a new angle to gain an appropriate level of appreciation for it. In their game against Maryland, Georgetown scored 3 goals, had 1 assist, picked up 10 ground balls, controlled 4 draws and caused 6 turnovers. In her game against Georgetown, Cummings scored 4 goals, had 5 assists, picked up 5 ground balls, controlled 6 draws and caused 3 turnovers.
Lest you think that's an anomaly, here's that same comparison between Rutgers and the junior midfielder: Rutgers 5 goals, 1 assist, 11 ground balls, 9 draw controls, and 2 caused turnovers. Cummings 5 goals, 1 assist, 4 ground balls, 4 draw controls, and no caused turnovers. Of course, Cummings only played slightly more than half the game.
Nationally, she ranks 14th with 39 goals and is 13th in goals per game. She is tied for 10th with 29 assists and her 1.92 assists per game is 14th. Put those together and her total of 62 points and 5.17 points per game place her second and third respectively in the country.. Cummings also cracks the top five with 85 draw controls or 7.08 per game. She does slack off a bit on the defensive end where she's only 23rd in the country with 21 caused turnovers - a rate of 1.75 per game - and she has yet to make a single save. Something to work on Taylor.