Fifty years ago, Maryland and Michigan State men’s soccer played to a 2-2 draw in the NCAA title game and were named co-champions. On Friday night, that 1968 team will be honored when the current Terps and Spartans square off under the lights at Ludwig Field.
The team will be recognized on the field prior to Friday night’s match and will be given personalized championship rings to mark the occasion, head coach Sasho Cirovski said.
The 1968 team finished 14-0-1, and is one of three teams to finish a season undefeated in Maryland history, with the other two coming in 1947 and 1958. Cirovski said that team made him believe Maryland could win a national championship when he took over a program that had fallen on hard times in 1993. After sharing the 1968 national championship, the Terps made the NCAA Tournament four times in the next 24 years and just once in the 17 years before Cirovski took over. Cirovski rebuilt the program into a national power, winning national championships of his own in 2005 and 2008.
The celebration pregame should be a good precursor to a game between two teams that have something to prove. Michigan State is ranked No. 13 in the most recent US Soccer Coaches poll, but is coming off a 1-0 home loss to Wisconsin. Maryland has won four out of five after not scoring a goal in its first four games, and a win over the Spartans would be its best so far in 2018 and help build momentum as it hits the homestretch of the regular season.
In other news
On the first day of the FBI’s trial examining corruption in college basketball, the lawyer of former Adidas executive Jim Gatto alleged that Under Armour offered Kansas’s Silvio De Sousa $20,000 to play for Maryland.
The AMQBHG could be back. Third-string quarterback Max Bortenschlager is out for the season with an ankle injury.
Ryan wrote about the tough test Maryland faces against Michigan this week.
Here’s interim head coach Matt Canada on this week’s game.
Here’s The Washington Post’s Emily Giambalvo on how the Terps could finally have their starting offensive line play as a unit for the first time this season.
As for the rest of the team, Maryland should be at full strength minus Lorenzo Harrison and Jake Funk, writes The Baltimore Sun’s Don Markus.
The Diamondback wrote about how Maryland men’s lacrosse is finding it easier to focus heading into 2019.