Maryland 8-1 Wagner: Terps Run Riot in NCAA First Round

Forty-six seconds. That’s all it took for Maryland to tell Wagner exactly how this was going to go.

Francisca Eschoyez, the Terps’ leading scorer all season, buried a penalty corner less than a minute into Friday’s NCAA first-round tie in College Park. By the end of the first quarter it was 5-0. By half-time, six. The final score read Maryland 8, Wagner 1, and honestly it could have been worse.

This was Maryland’s first NCAA Tournament win since 2023, and they made it look like they’d never been away. The No. 2 seeds were ruthless from the first whistle. Maddie Vasilios converted a penalty corner to make it 3-0, and the fifth arrived right on the first-quarter buzzer, a deflection from an aerial into the circle that beat the Wagner keeper as the clock hit zero. Wagner, to their credit, got one back. But this was never a contest. It was a statement.

Wagner’s week still counts for plenty

Let’s not lose the other half of this story. Wagner arrived in College Park having already made history. The Seahawks won the NEC title in overtime against Sacred Heart, then beat Fairfield 1-0 on Wednesday for the programme’s first-ever NCAA Tournament win. Julia de Leeuw scored that one in the 50th minute. They were playing with house money on Friday, and Maryland are not the team you want to meet when you’re doing that.

Floortje Leunisse, Wagner’s 13-goal top scorer, had no room to breathe all afternoon. Goalkeeper Mia DiGenova, the NEC Goalkeeper of the Year, was peppered from the start. And there was a nice subplot on the sideline: Wagner assistant coach Rayne Wright was an All-Big Ten First Team pick at Maryland in 2023. She knows this programme inside out. It didn’t matter. Nobody was stopping Maryland today.

What it means

Maryland are 19-2 now, and the Big Ten final defeat to Northwestern already feels like a long time ago. The Terps won the Big Ten regular-season title at 7-1, beat Ohio State and Iowa in the conference tournament, and came into this one as the No. 2 overall seeds. They’ve now won 70 NCAA Tournament games in programme history, with eight national titles behind them. The pedigree is real, and on Friday’s evidence the hunger is too.

Sunday brings the real test. Maryland host the winner of Friday’s late tie between No. 7 Iowa and Duke at 1pm ET (11pm PKT) in College Park, with a place in the Louisville semifinals on the line. Iowa would be a Big Ten semi-final rematch, Maryland won that one 4-1. Duke would be a fresh problem, an ACC side with nothing to lose. Either way, the Terps will fancy it. For our money, anyone coming to College Park on Sunday is walking into a buzzsaw right now.