PHILADELPHIA — In a men’s lacrosse season filled with unlikely results, it seems only fitting that the 2016 campaign concluded with an unlikely hero emerging to lead the unlikeliest of champions to victory.
Entering the NCAA tournament, Chris Cloutier had scored 24 goals for North Carolina during the regular season — only the third-leading scorer on his team. Furthermore, the Tar Heels themselves had six losses and were reasonably sure but not positive they would even be invited to the dance. Now as Memorial Day draws to a close, the Tar Heels are national champions and Cloutier is the tournament’s most outstanding player after setting a new Division I record with 19 goals in the tournament. None were bigger than his last one in overtime that gave North Carolina a 14-13 win for the last of its string of upsets, this one at the expense of top-seeded Maryland.
“I couldn't have any of my success without any of these guys right here,” Cloutier said. “Not really being the fastest guy on the team, I can't really just set up myself. So I have guys like Luke (Goldstock) here and Ponch (Steve Pontrello) drawing all the attention and me kind of just getting the dunks.”
They might have been dunks, but Cloutier certainly knew what to do with them during the Tar Heels’ four-game postseason run. His 19 tournament goals came on 27 shots, and only four of those attempts were off cage.
North Carolina (12-6) is the first unseeded team to win the title, doing so with the most losses for any Division I tournament champion. Cloutier’s late game winner was made possible by goalie Brian Balkam, who made two critical saves in the late stages of the contest.
Not unlike the Tar Heels’ season as a whole, Monday’s championship game featured more ups and downs than the Lincoln Financial Field press-box elevator. North Carolina raced to a 4-0 lead in the opening 4:10, only to watch Maryland mount a four-goal run of its own to pull even with 5:06 still remaining in the first quarter. The back-and-forth continued as the Terrapins took advantage of a North Carolina scoring drought that lasted 16:59 spanning intermission to take a 9-7 lead.
Then Cloutier went to work, scoring the game’s next three goals to put the Tar Heels back in front. But the Terrapins answered with a 4-1 burst of their own to grab a 13-11 lead with 7:49 to go in regulation. Goals by Goldstock and Patrick Kelly got the Tar Heels even once again, setting the stage for Balkam and Cloutier to etch their names in the lore of the sport.
With the fourth quarter winding down, Maryland’s Matt Rambo got a great look right on the doorstep that Balkam turned aside. But far from the action, a brief scuffle resulted in Goldstock being assessed a one-minute unsportsmanlike conduct penalty with only 3.9 seconds left. The call allowed the Terrapins to start overtime with a man-up opportunity, three of which they had converted already in the game, as well as possession without a face-off. But Balkam was there again to stop Connor Kelly’s open shot from the right side. The Tar Heels cleared and killed off the remainder of Goldstock’s penalty, and then Maryland’s Mike McCarney drew a flag for crosschecking that gave UNC an extra-man opportunity. After working the ball around the crease, Cloutier took a feed on the right wing from Michael Tagliaferri and ripped an underhand shot past Maryland goalie Kyle Bernlohr.
“That's a play that Tags and I do quite a bit in practice and throughout the year,” Cloutier said. “And when he threw that ball to me and I was hands-free, I just thought I could take it and luckily it went in.”
Goldstock was quick to express gratitude to Balkam and Cloutier. “I mean, these two saved my butt,” he said.
On the penalty itself, Goldstock added, “I wasn't thinking, and I can't blame that on anyone else but myself. ... And thank God I had these two to save me from a lot of mental disasters after that.”
The game winner was Cloutier’s fifth of the game. Goldstock added four goals, and Balkam finished with 13 saves. Rambo (three goals, three assists) and Henry West (two and four) each recorded six points for the Terrapins, with Kelly adding four goals.
This result was anything but expected for the Tar Heels, whose senior-laden 2015 squad saw its season end in the quarterfinal round at the hands of the Terrapins. This much younger North Carolina team began this season 3-3 but began to put its productive offense together in the latter half of the year.
“You know, pressure is a funny thing,” said coach Joe Breschi. “These guys had zero pressure. ... It wasn't pretty early, but also we had guys playing in different positions early on. So we were trying to find our way. But they continued to trust in the system and get after it.”
It was an extra special day for the UNC community. The most recent Tar Heel championship team from 1991 was on hand for their silver anniversary recognition. A day earlier, the UNC women’s team won its championship game, also against Maryland, by a 13-7 count. It’s the second Division I men’s and women’s double in history, with Princeton the only other school to accomplish the feat in 1994.
For Maryland (17-3), arguably the most snake-bitten program in the men’s version of the sport, the program’s fourth loss on Memorial Day in the last six years continued over four decades of championship frustration. Despite 13 overall appearances in the NCAA final, Maryland owns only two championships, the last coming in 1975.
“That's obviously a tough locker room right now,” Terrapins’ coach John Tillman said. “I couldn't be more proud of a group of guys than I am right now. That's why it hurts so much. That was just a back and forth battle.”
