Bill Tierney graciously, however reluctantly took a call this week to talk about the Denver men’s lacrosse team’s 2015 NCAA championship.

“In days like this, you want to live in your future,” said Tierney, who like most college coaches will spend Memorial Day weekend holed up in his home waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to ease and wondering what could have been. “I’ve never been much of a look-back guy.”

But there’s good cause to look back this weekend. ESPNU will broadcast a marathon of NCAA lacrosse championship games starting Sunday and running through Monday, the fifth anniversary of Denver’s historic win at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, which would have been the site of this year’s final four.

On May 25, 2015, the Pioneers defeated Maryland 10-5 to become the first team from the West to win it all. The game will re-air Monday at 2 p.m. Eastern.

“That achievement — whether people say west of the Appalachians, west of North Carolina, west of the Mississippi or whatever — is something we tell our kids no one could ever take away from you,” Tierney said.

Tierney’s seventh NCAA championship validated the decision he made six years earlier to pull up stakes at Princeton, where he won his first six titles, and brandish his Hall of Fame resume at an office with views of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. The move shocked the lacrosse community. But Tierney was wowed by Peg Bradley-Doppes, Denver’s longtime athletic director who stood with him on a balcony overseeing those mountains and vowed they would win a national championship together.

“I never felt I needed validation,” said Tierney, who is 136-43 with five championship weekend appearances in 11 seasons at DU. “I felt maybe Peg did and the school did for bringing me out there and making lacrosse a priority sport in a place that didn’t have football, didn’t have baseball, was a hockey school and was 1,800 miles from the epicenter of our game.”

Tierney succeeded Jamie Munro, proclaimed Denver would become the lacrosse capital of the West and delivered on that promise. The Pioneers had only been a Division I program for 10 years when he inherited the position. Two years later, they hosted the first NCAA tournament game west of the Mississippi, defeating Villanova in front of a standing room-only crowd at Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium en route to their first final four.

Four more championship weekend appearances would follow, but Denver has made it to Memorial Day only once. And the Pioneers made it count.

“John Danowski has a saying I repeat all the time,” said Tierney, quoting his longtime friend and the only other Division I coach with at least 400 career wins. “It’s a simple saying: ‘Nobody knows.’ Nobody knows what we go through, how many times we suspended kids for missing class, had a kid sick all week and we stick him out on the field to be a decoy, had a kid whose parent died or whose parents are getting a divorce.

“Nobody knows this stuff. So when you make it through the end, the first emotion you feel is not happiness, it’s relief. And it’s almost compassion for the guy on the other sideline. They’ve almost been there too, and now they’re not relieved for a year or five years or 10 years because they might not get back there.

“So when you see these [championships] over and over again, it brings back that sense of knowing what we went through.”

It was Danowski, in fact, who hoisted the walnut and bronze trophy just one year earlier. Duke defeated Denver in the NCAA semifinals before downing Notre Dame, always the bridesmaid, in the championship game at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium.

The 2015 season started with a Denver-Duke rematch in Atlanta. A baby-faced freshman named Trevor Baptiste won 25 of 34 faceoffs and a high-profile transfer named Connor Cannizzaro showed just how dangerous offensive coordinator Matt Brown’s box-field hybrid system could be with a multi-threat attackman orchestrating it from behind the goal.

Making his Denver debut, Cannizzaro, who was the 2014 ACC Freshman of the Year at Maryland but went west to reunite with his brother, Sean, shredded the Blue Devils with three goals and five assists as the Pioneers won a 17-13 shootout.

“It was certainly the coming-out party for Trevor. We knew he was good in the fall, but we didn’t know he was this good,” Tierney said. “And some of the stuff Matt was doing, he had been way ahead of the curve anyway. But having somebody like Connor was really cool.”

Denver’s starting lineup that day was identical to the one it would trot out Memorial Day. It had the look of a team that needed to be very creative in its recruiting. The Pioneers had zero players from Baltimore or Long Island. Their top cover defenseman, Carson Cannon, was from Stillwater, Minnesota. Their rope unit consisted of a long pole from Carlsbad, California (Mike Riis) and a short-stick defensive midfielder from Fishers, Indiana (Garret Holst). Their starting goalie, Ryan LaPlante, was a local kid from Fort Collins, Colorado.

They took their lumps, including a 15-day stretch that included a pair of two-goal losses at North Carolina and Ohio State sandwiched around a comeback overtime win against Notre Dame at home. The loss to the Buckeyes was especially motivating. Denver blew a two-goal lead in the fourth quarter.

“When you win, you’ve got to remember, we could see these guys again,” Tierney said. “When you lose, it’s ‘I hope we see those guys again.’”

Lo and behold, after the Pioneers, who steamrolled through the Big East schedule, vanquished Brown in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Ohio State loomed as their quarterfinal opponent at what was then Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver. The de facto home field advantage surely did not seem to help as the Buckeyes came out throwing haymakers.

Ohio State jumped out to a 7-1 lead early in the second quarter when Tierney called timeout. Before he could address the players, senior attackman Wesley Berg beat him to the punch.

“There are three moments that stick out in my existence with Wes Berg,” Tierney said. “Number one was when he was a sophomore and we were losing to North Carolina in the quarterfinals at Indianapolis. We were losing 9-4 at halftime. The coaches were outside the locker room talking about what to say to the team. We walk in there. Wes Berg is a sophomore and he’s standing on a stool just screaming, ‘We are not going to lose this game.’”

They didn’t. Denver came back to beat North Carolina 12-11. Berg led the way with four goals.

“Number two was this quarterfinal game,” Tierney said, recalling the six-goal hole the Pioneers had dug themselves against Ohio State. “Wes took over the huddle. He said, ‘Just get the next one, and we’ll be fine.’”

Berg scored five of his game-high six goals during a nine-goal run that propelled the Pioneers to a 15-13 victory.

Tierney’s third Berg memory came in the final four the following week — a signature moment etched in NCAA championship lore.

Denver had the perfect pre-shot clock blueprint for Memorial Day weekend success. The Pioneers could win faceoffs at will thanks to Baptiste, control possession with a skilled offense that’s not prone to turnovers and capitalize on worn-down defenses with high-percentage shooters like Berg, Zach Miller, Erik Adamson and the Cannizzaros.

But the Pioneers did not have an answer for Notre Dame’s Sergio Perkovic, the 6-foot-4 Adonis who unleashed four goals in the final five minutes of regulation to lead the Fighting Irish back from a 9-5 deficit. Nick Osello scored with nine seconds left to send the game to overtime tied at 10.

Baptiste won the faceoff to start overtime, but Notre Dame long pole John Sexton stripped him. The ball rolled into the Fighting Irish’s offensive end, where Matt Kavanagh briefly came up with it before Cannon dislodged it once more. Riis scooped the ball, Denver cleared and Tierney called timeout.

Twenty-six seconds later, Berg deposited a feed from Tyler Pace to lift the Pioneers to an 11-10 victory.

That wasn’t the moment, though. It was the goal Berg scored in the middle of Notre Dame’s late-game blitz.

“There’s always a little luck involved,” Tierney said. “Tyler Pace throws a pass to Wes Berg in a game where we could’ve just held the ball. A bad pass goes on the ground, Bergey picks it up and puts an around-the-world bouncer beneath the pipe. If that doesn’t happen, we don’t get a chance to go into overtime.”

Comparatively speaking, Denver’s 10-5 win over Maryland two days later was boring, anticlimactic even. Berg scored two goals out of the gate and finished with a game-high five en route to NCAA championship MVP honors. The Pioneers never trailed. Defenseman Christian Burgdorf, a righty and the perfect lockdown complement to the left-handed Cannon, limited Matt Rambo to two goals on 2-for-8 shooting while Cannon blanked Joe LoCascio. Baptiste went 10-for-19 and LaPlante made 13 saves.

“The championship game was extremely boring. That’s just how we wanted it,” Tierney said. “We wanted to see if we could wear them down. We had a smart team that year and we did.”

Asked to define the legacy of the 2015 team, Tierney chose the word hope.

“Whether you’re a young kid right now throwing the ball against a wall in Idaho or you’re a team nobody’s thinking about or you’re a coach that says, ‘I’m going to take a chance because I believe in these kids and I’m going to make my mark,’ it’s hope,” he said. “Maybe it’s hope for a school right now. Maybe there’s someone out there saying, ‘Denver can do it. So can we.’”

The below broadcasts are all scheduled for Monday, May 25, on ESPNU. All times Eastern.

NOON
UNC VS. MARYLAND, 2016 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

North Carolina had six losses entering the NCAA tournament, the most ever by a team that would go on to win the national championship. The Tar Heels caught lightning in a bottle, winning an emotional quarterfinal in Columbus, Ohio — where coach Joe Breschi, formerly of Ohio State, visited the gravesite of his son, Michael — and riding the hot hand of Chris Cloutier to their first NCAA title since 1991.

UNC defeated Maryland 14-13 in overtime at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, the wildest championship game during this six-year stretch. Buckle up during the final two minutes of regulation — which included two turnovers, a hit pipe, a save, a crease violation and an unsportsmanlike penalty on Luke Goldstock that put the Tar Heels man down going into OT —and a tense Maryland possession that ended with a big-time save by goalie Brian Balkam.

Cloutier, who scored nine goals in the semifinals against Loyola, deposited the game-winner and earned MVP honors with a record 19 goals during the tournament.

2 P.M.
MARYLAND VS. DENVER, 2015 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

How ironic. Rambo and Baptiste, now roommates in Philadelphia, should have fun exchanging smack talk while re-watching the game that transpired just minutes from their current residence. They were freshmen at the time, as Denver defeated Maryland 10-5 to become the first team from west of the Appalachians to win the NCAA championship.

4 P.M.
NOTRE DAME VS. DUKE, 2014 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

Myles Jones and Deemer Class formed the most lethal 1-2 midfield punch in recent memory, as the Blue Devils won their third championship in five years with an 11-9 win over the Fighting Irish at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. Attackman Jordan Wolf also starred for Duke, which averaged 15 goals per game.

6 P.M.
OHIO STATE VS. MARYLAND, 2017 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

Maryland at last! The most talked about NCAA title drought ended at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., where the Terps defeated the Buckeyes 9-6 to win their first national championship in 42 years. Maryland had come close so many times, finishing as runner-up nine times and advancing to 19 final fours between 1975 and 2017. “Be the best” was no longer a tagline, but a prophecy.

8 P.M.
DUKE VS. YALE, 2018 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

“We’re national champs dude!” It’s worth watching the entirety of the 2018 final if only to build up to Yale coach Andy Shay’s unscripted exuberance in the post-game interview with ESPN’s Paul Carcaterra. The Bulldogs defeated Duke 13-11 in New England, with Tewaaraton Award winner Ben Reeves and NCAA championship MVP Matt Gaudet leading their high-octane offense. It marked Yale’s first title of the NCAA era. The Bulldogs shared a national championship with Harvard and Princeton in 1883.

10 P.M.
YALE VS. VIRGINIA, 2019 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

The Cavaliers competed their return to the top of the college lacrosse world by dethroning Yale 13-9 in Philadelphia. Virginia had a flair for the dramatic, coming back against Maryland and Duke in the NCAA quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively, to win both games in overtime. Michael Kraus’ controversial tying goal against Maryland, which hit the bottom side of the crossbar and caromed out to midfield but was ruled a goal, will forever be debated. But the Cavaliers needed no such luck in the final, dismantling the Bulldogs with a near-flawless performance backstopped by NCAA championship MVP Alex Rode.