On its surface, UMBC’s transformation from a 3-8 team into a conference champion is unexpected enough.
That it couldn’t have happened without an 0-11 team finishing the season on a two-game winning streak makes it all the more remarkable.
The Retrievers (6-8), who play in Wednesday’s opening round game at Marist, are in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2009 thanks to a stirring run over an eight-day stretch. But they’ll be the first to acknowledge how tenuous it all seemed when they lost to UMass Lowell in their home finale on April 20.
“We thought we were out,” coach Ryan Moran said. “Then our sports information director said, ‘There is one way you can still get in, but you need a team that hasn’t been winning a lot to win.’ Not to be disrespectful or anything to Binghamton, because we owe a lot of this to them.”
The thing is, Binghamton hadn’t won at all in 2019. But the Bearcats handled Hartford on April 20 to at least give UMBC some hope of claiming a tiebreaker to reach the conference tournament entering the last week of the season.
The Retrievers then needed more cooperation from Binghamton when it visited UMass Lowell. With several UMBC players watching the game on laptops during down time in their team hotel, the Bearcats claimed a 9-7 victory to give the Retrievers something to play for the next day against Hartford.
“There was just a new energy to the team, and it felt good that we still had a chance,” sophomore attackman Trevor Patschorke said.
UMBC took advantage, handling Hartford 11-9 and securing the last spot in the America East tournament as part of a four-way tie with Binghamton, Hartford and UMass Lowell.
It could have easily turned out to be brief cameo, but instead the Retrievers kept winning. They blasted tournament host and top seed Stony Brook 14-8 in the semifinals as Brett McIntyre scored four goals on four shots.
The 14-13 title game defeat of Vermont was far dicier. The Catamounts scored the first three goals and maintained a four-goal edge early in the second half. Yet UMBC uncorked a 5-0 run, and the teams traded scores from there until tournament MVP Patschorke delivered the game-winner with 66 seconds to go.
“It was a little surreal, especially the way that game played out,” Moran said. “We were down by a lot and then came back, and then we went down by a lot and then we came back. That fourth quarter was probably one of the more impressive quarters we’ve had — giving a punch, taking a punch, giving a punch and then not backing down. When that game came to a conclusion, it was super-exciting.”
It was also a welcome payoff for a program that dominated the America East a decade ago but spent the last decade chasing Albany and Stony Brook. The Retrievers have posted a winning record just once in the last 10 seasons, and they struggled to generate much offense during Moran’s first two seasons.
Injuries were a major issue in 2018, including a knee injury that ended Patschorke’s freshman year after four games. This spring, the Retrievers have averaged a healthy 11.79 goals, but injuries ravaged their defense in the preseason.
UMBC took a plug-and-play approach out of necessity, with perhaps no one as emblematic of the adjustments as junior Danny Isaac. A short-stick defensive midfielder until midway through the season, he converted to pole and then got pushed to close defense for the first time in the conference tournament and even won a couple faceoffs against Stony Brook.
Patschorke credited the program’s handling of business off the field as a precursor to its breakout over an eight-day stretch. For Moran, it’s a tangible sign his program is making progress.
“We’ve been improving a lot throughout the year, but it didn’t reflect itself in wins and losses,” Moran said. “In the last month, we’ve made some big strides both defensively and offensively and been able to stay together and stay the course. We have a great senior class, and that improvement eventually started to yield some victories.”
The Retrievers hope they’re not finished quite yet. They’ll face Metro Atlantic champion Marist (10-6) in the opening round game, with a trip to top-seeded Penn State on Sunday at stake. Less than three weeks after UMBC figured its season was probably over, it will play in its first NCAA tournament game in a decade and aim to claim a postseason victory for the first time since a 2007 defeat of Maryland.
“We’re definitely peaking at the right time,” Patschorke said. “It’s very good timing for us. It just took a little time for us to figure out who we were.”