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Finding winners and losers in wild lacrosse coaching week

Maryland has a new coach. A month ago, he'd have been a mild surprise.

Penn State has a new coach. A week ago, he'd have been a big surprise.

Cornell has a new coach. All along, he seemed like the next man in line.

Harvard is looking for a new coach for the second time in a three-year span.

Here's a look at who did well, who treaded water and who wound up losing now that college lacrosse's coaching carousel is near completion. 

WINNERS

* Penn State

Unquestionably, the school that came out furthest ahead in any of this was Penn State. The Nittany Lions have only two NCAA tournament appearances, and wound up landing Jeff Tambroni, a guy who took Cornell to three  final fours in the last four seasons. Penn State went after the biggest fish it could have hoped to have landed and pulled it off. The Nits might not be relevant immediately, but they simply couldn't have done any better.

* John Tillman

In a little more than 34 months, Tillman went from the top assistant at Navy to the head coach of a second-tier Ivy League program (Harvard) to the head coach at Maryland. Not bad. He received a seven-year contract with the Terps, so chances are good his second head coaching stint will be longer than his first.

* Ben DeLuca

The Cornell grad was next in line for the last few years, though it started to seem as if Tambroni would be in Ithaca for the long haul. DeLuca was pursued last year by Princeton, and that certainly would have been a great hire. Instead, he winds up stepping up from running the Big Red's defense to running the program. DeLuca had a hand in three final four teams, and it seemed only a matter of time before he got a team of his own. That it happens to be Cornell makes it even sweeter.

EVEN

* Jeff Tambroni

Tambroni told the Ithaca Journal his decision had much more to do with family --- his wife, Cornell's former field hockey coach and a Penn State grad, will have a chance to help with the Nittany Lions' field hockey program --- than anything else. That's a good overriding factor, and a nice reminder that money and prestige don't always drive decisions in non-revenue sports. Nonetheless, it is a trade of a final four team for an outfit that won two games last year. It'll be a few years --- at least --- before Tambroni has a team playing on Memorial Day weekend.

* Maryland

The Terrapins shouldn't be criticized for getting rebuffed by Tambroni, which is probably a tempting thing for second-guessers to do. Tillman's resume --- 20-19 over three seasons --- isn't particularly deep, but the short-term prognosis remains pretty much the same. If Maryland gets decent goalie play in 2011, it has a chance to play deep into May. The next year, with the starting attack and starting close defense wiped out by graduation, there will be a step back. That sequence was going to play out regardless of the coach. Tillman is bright and energetic, but this is still a bit of a gamble.

* Cornell

The Big Red lose a coach with a 109-40 record, which typically would be a pretty big deal. But elevating a capable assistant who was part of eight straight Ivy League title teams isn't a bad way to solve the problem. The Big Red will maintain continuity, and that's important for a group with so much success.

LOSERS

* Ivy League

Five of the Ivy's seven jobs have turned over in the last 13 months, with four coaches --- Bill Tierney (Princeton to Denver), Brian Voelker (Penn to Drexel), Tillman (Harvard to Maryland) and Tambroni (Cornell to Penn State) --- electing to leave. All of those happened for different reasons, but that's still remarkable flight from such a competitive league.

* CAA coaches other than Tambroni

Given the gaggle of competitive programs, it wouldn't have been the worst thing for the Towsons and Delawares of the world to have Penn State not taking things particularly seriously in lacrosse. Tambroni's hire ensures the Nits will be a force before long.

* Dave Cottle

He's the one guy who left a job unwillingly and didn't wind up with a new one. In any sort of coaching shuffle, that's usually going land someone on the wrong side of this sort of assessment.

Analysis: In long run, Tillman hire will tell more about Maryland than coaching ability

In some ways, John Tillman is a very lucky man today.

He has jumped from a school where lacrosse wasn't taken all that seriously for years (certainly not in comparison to Ivy League brethren Princeton and Cornell) to a place that has earned NCAA tournament invitations 33 times in 40 years.

He takes over a team that returns, depending on whether Will Yeatman petitions and receives a restored year of eligibility, eight or nine of 10 starters.

He parlays a 20-19 record over three years --- including a not-so-pleasant 1-10 record in one-goal games, which I'll admit I was surprised to discover --- into a seven-year contract with a program that safely lands somewhere in the Second Five in terms of overall upside of college lacrosse programs.

(That would be behind Syracuse, Virginia, Johns Hopkins, North Carolina and Duke, in the same neighborhood as Cornell and Princeton and ahead of Georgetown and Notre Dame).

And in some ways, Tillman isn't so fortunate.

He inherits an impatient fan base that wanted to win big yesterday.

His track record as a head coach is sparse enough that the second he absorbs a dubious defeat, there will be questions about his readiness for the gig.

His day-in, day-out facilities lag behind the rest of the ACC.

In the short term, he'll receive minimal credit for anything that happens next year short of a national championship, simply because he inherits a loaded team.

Stretching it out a bit, he'll need to rebuild both his attack and his defense in 2012 when graduation takes a severe toll on the Terps.

It isn't paradise, and it isn't a disaster, either. Assuming Tillman does his usual recruiting magic, Maryland's talent level won't be an issue in the years to come. It wasn't in recent years, either.

The more this hire gets analyzed, the easier it is to come to the conclusion the eventual outcome of Tillman's tenure will likely say more about Maryland than it will about the coach.

Sure, Tillman's a bit of a risk. Of the 60 Division I lacrosse coaches this past spring, 35 have coached in an NCAA tournament game. Tillman has not.

At the same time, he's bright, engaging and personable. He helped scheme Navy to the final four in 2004 and the quarterfinals a year later, and it is an indication of how quickly he generated interest (among fans and especially recruits) at Harvard that going 6-6 this season was a mild disappointment.

Toward the latter half of his 12-year stint in Annapolis, it seemed clear he would be a capable head coach one day. Maryland understandably agrees, having made the most of the candidate pool willing to listen to it.

(An aside: Virginia assistant Marc Van Arsdale, who also interviewed at Maryland, was another fine possibility. Despite struggling during a head coaching stint at Penn --- not exactly a lacrosse bastion for the last two decades --- he's done an amazing job with the Cavaliers' offense and quietly is often the smartest man in the room --- by far. That Maryland eventually zeroed in on Tillman and Van Arsdale suggests a job well done by its search committee in figuring out the most capable options for the job).

Of course, there's a question that lingers not far beneath the surface and will remain submerged for a while: What if Tillman winds up producing results much like Dick Edell and Dave Cottle did?

The pair combined for 27 seasons in College Park, nine final fours, three Memorial Day appearances and no national titles. The Terps reached 21 NCAA tournaments in that span, including 18 in the last 20 years.

Contrary to popular opinion, failing to win a national championship does not constitute failure. Edell went 171-76 (.692) in 18 years and was inducted into the sport's hall of fame. Cottle was 99-45 (.688) in nine years, and with 280 total victories to his name will probably get the chance to coach again if he pleases.

Assigning a five-point scale (0-national title, 1-finalist, 2-semifinalist, 3-quarterfinalist, 4-first round, 5-missed tournament) to Maryland's results in that span, here's a breakdown of the average results of their stins in nine-year increments --- Edell I (1984-92), Edell II (1993-2001) and Cottle (2002-10):

Edell I: 3.56
Edell II: 2.78
Cottle: 3.00

Maryland was a quarterfinal team on an annual basis under Cottle, and a little better in the second half of Edell's time in College Park.

Nearly three decades is a pretty decent sample size. And at some point, after players, coaches and administrators come and go, the onus has to eventually fall on something as faceless as the institution.

If Tillman is outrageously successful (read: snaps the 35-year championship drought and vaults Maryland past Virginia and Hopkins on the national pecking order on a consistent basis) or an abysmal failure (a descent mirroring North Carolina's tumble in the late 1990s would fulfill that definition), he'll get the credit or blame. No one's done either lately at Maryland, and he's the changing variable.

But if he plugs along, wins nearly 70 percent of his game and reaches a final four every three or four years, then it will really be time for those who shunned a serious examination of the program vis-a-vis the consistent title contenders in the last month to reconsider their perspective of Maryland lacrosse.

And there's plenty to think about.

It starts with a locker room just a step above the visitors' digs at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The lousy condition of the Byrd Stadium field --- not to mention flipping between an overbooked practice field and the football turf facility that doesn't have lacrosse lines --- exacerbates matters.

But other questions exist. They include coaches' compensation, especially for assistants (that data will be interesting to discover). Same goes for wiggle room with admissions standards; anyone who believes that issue is confined to football is mistaken, even if no coach or athletic administrator can do a much about it.

The funny thing is no matter how much Maryland (again, this is the school, not the athletic department) tries to make people believe it is an academic juggernaut, it still won't be perceived to be in the same conversation as the Ivies, Hopkins, Duke and Georgetown. It's the same thing when Maryland is compared to North Carolina and Virginia.

Feel free to argue the reality, though that's beside the point. Perception means more in recruiting, and Maryland doesn't quite possess the same cachet to the parents of the future lawyers, bankers and financial gurus of America as a Princeton or a Hopkins or a Duke does.

The point of this isn't to degrade Tillman, who has a chance to be a superb coach and is a choice difficult for anyone to object to thanks to his smarts and savvy.

But, if like his predecessors, he doesn't win the big one, it will more likely reflect the environment in which he toils rather than his own efforts and competence to get the job done.

Tillman noncommittal about Terps' lacrosse staff

New Maryland lacrosse coach John Tillman has a seven-year deal and a new gig.

Now he just needs a staff.

There are options among his old Harvard assistants, including Kevin Warne (who ran the Crimson's defense) and Rob Cross.

There are also options from Dave Cottle's last Maryland staff. Defensive coordinator Dave Slafkosky just completed his 27th season at Maryland, and Terp alum Ryan Moran coached with Tillman for two seasons at Navy. Moran spent the last three years at Maryland.

"That's something we have to sit down and discuss," Tillman said. "I have a lot of loyalty toward [my assistants], and I feel like there are some great assistants down at Maryland. This is one of the trickier things about a coaching change because you know what's at stake."

Terps' Tillman not tempering expectations upon arrival

The tough part for John Tillman wasn't agreeing to come to Maryland.

It was knowing things weren't entirely wrapped up at Harvard.

He'd spent 32 months at the Ivy League school, a blink of an eye in the span of most careers. He came, he recruited (well), he went 20-19.

And now he's off to College Park.

It's a good deal for him. Tillman gets probably more job security than anyone would have anticipated (a seven-year deal), a chance to return to an area where he worked for a dozen years as an assistant at Navy and the opportunity to move from a program with three all-time NCAA quarterfinal appearances to a school where three straight quarterfinal appearances isn't enough for some fans.

Oh, yeah. About that ... Tillman doesn't seem to mind.

"No one's going to put bigger expectations than I am," Tillman said on a conference call with reporters this afternoon. "I know everybody has high expectations at every program, and mine are always higher. I want to win every game. I don't go into any game thinking 'We can't win this' or 'we didn't do everything possible put our focus and energy into winning."

Chances are, that will ingratiate him rather well with Maryland fans who remain puzzled the Terrapins have not collected a national title in 35 years (more on that in a later post).

The greater question is, what are the expectations of Tillman's superiors? In other words, how exactly is the bar defined when Tillman's predecessor, Dave Cottle, was 99-45 in nine years but had a four-year final four drought.

"It hasn't changed," said Michael Lipitz, the senior associate athletic director who was in charge of the coaching search. "It hasn't changed from the last several years and it's not going to change. We want to be routinely in the mix and be able to compete for championships, whether at the conference or national level. This has never been about national championships. Everyone wants to win national championships. In order to do that you have to do all the right things day in and day out and out yourself in position to compete for a title. We believe John Tillman is the right guy."

This particular deal came together in less than two weeks. Any damage done with the absence of a head coach for nearly four weeks will likely be mitigated by the arrival of someone most in lacrosse circles would acknowledge as someone heavily invested in recruiting.

Tillman brought in significant classes to Harvard, a program often derisively dubbed "The Lost Cause" (a characterization Tillman was always sure to bring up at least once in every conversation with reporters). Chances are, that end of things won't be a problem at Maryland.

And as for what others think he should be doing? It would seem Tillman is probably thinking bigger than anyone. He brushed off concerns about a disadvantage in facilities, pointing out plans were in place and asserting the importance of focusing on what exists rather than what doesn't.

That attitude could win friends now --- and it could also be used as a self-imposed measuring stick later.

"I think a school, when they put their resources behind it and get the right people in here [they] can accomplish anything," Tillman said. "If you don't dream big, you're not going to achieve your goals. With the resources they have and the commitment, why not Maryland? Why not?"

Navy's Meade finds the real winner in Tillman hire

There will be time to hear from new Maryland lacrosse coach John Tillman (he has a teleconference at 4 p.m.), analyze the hire (a solid one given the lack of interest from accomplished coaches) and assess the decision to give him a seven-year contract (which was probably part of the price of doing business after ousting a guy with a .688 winning percentage).

But there is an unexpected winner in all of this that can be declared for certain.

"The benefit is my daughters are going to get Kit Kat bars at Halloween," said Navy coach Richie Meade, who had Tillman on his staff for 12 years before Tillman's three-year stint at Harvard. "Every year he's been at Harvard, he's sent Kit Kat bars to my kids. We have moved, but when he was an assistant here, he gave them Kit Kat bars at Halloween when they were very small. He lived around the block from us. We would get there, and all the kids would get little Kit Kat bars, and my girls got big Kit Kat bars."

How big?

"What we in the Navy call Nimitz-class Kit Kat bars," Meade said. "The girls will look forward to that."

Something else that could be interesting to see in the next year: Tillman coach a game at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium after spending so much time on the Midshipmen sideline.

"Obviously, I'm excited for John to get the opportunity at the University of Maryland," Meade said. "I think we'll do an outstanding job and be an outstanding representative of the university and the lacrosse program."