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News & Notes:

• The NCAA tournament field will be announced on Sunday night, so we should get into that. Maryland is still ranked third in both major polls, but has moved to No. 2 in the latest, and final, public RPI, which was released by the NCAA on Monday.

One thing people need to understand is that the polls are great for the fans in the regular season, but they mean absolutely nothing when it comes to the postseason. A team's RPI, strength of schedule and quality wins vs. teams ranked 1-5, 6-10 and 11-20 mean everything.

Here's what we know: there are six automatic qualifiers (America East, CAA, ECAC, Ivy, MAAC and Patriot) and 10 at-large selections. The top eight teams are seeded with the first round match-ups being based both upon "seeding" and travel restrictions (400 miles is limit for bus travel and a maximum of two flights are allowed in the first round).

We also know that as of right now Army and Denver are in the field by taking the Patriot League and ECAC AQ's, respectively. The other four AQ's will be decided by conference tournaments this weekend.

America East: Vermont at Stony Brook; UMBC vs. Albany

CAA: UMass at Towson; Drexel at Delaware

Ivy: Yale vs. Princeton; Brown at Cornell

MAAC: Mount St. Mary's vs. Manhattan; Marist vs. Siena

The four ACC schools and Syracuse are considered locks for the top five seeds in the tournament and will take up half of the at-large field.

And that's all we know! There are way too many scenarios to go into to try to predict who will play who and which teams will be seeded sixth, seventh and eighth. Too many things can happen. Don't believe me? Think about this: there was a four-way tie for the regular season title in the Ivy League. Cornell won the tiebreaker and gets to host the first-ever conference tournament. Sounds good, right? Well, Cornell has lost three of its four games this season on its home field. Cornell and Princeton look to be in good shape to make the tournament, but what if Brown or Yale win the AQ? Is the Ivy League a three-bid league this year?

How about this? The CAA team that has the best RPI is Hofstra (#13), which did not even qualify for the CAA tournament.

The other big question is whether or not Johns Hopkins will make the tournament. The Blue Jays have been in every tournament since the second one. But in order to even be eligible to make the tournament Hopkins has to beat Loyola on Saturday. Here's the rub: the Greyhounds are currently No. 8 in the RPI and would most certainly drop with a loss to the Blue Jays. That would mean that the Hopkins win would be an 11-20 victory and not a 6-10 win. But that would still give Hopkins two 11-20 victories (Loyola & Towson). Factor that with Hopkins' RPI, which will be near if not in the top 10, and a top five strength of schedule and the Blue Jays will probably be in the field of 16. Don't forget what matters: RPI, SOS and quality wins.

The NCAA will not make the final RPI public, but LaxPower publishes its RPI and it is as close as it gets to the official one. You can check that out here, along with some other good charts to make your speculation and arguing more fun.

Essentially, we don't know a lot about the field as a whole right now, but I'm pretty confident that the Terps will be making their eighth-straight NCAA tournament appearance and will be hosting a game next weekend. It's the against who and when that's still to be decided. Tune in to ESPNU at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 9 to find out how it all shakes out.

• The Terps went 1 of 3 on extra-man on Saturday and dropped to No. 2 in the nation behind North Carolina, which was idle. But the Terps moved into the nation's top spot in caused turnovers this week. Maryland caused 19 Fairfield turnovers and is now No. 1 with 11.15 CTs per game. Individually, two Terps are in the top 10 this week. Ryan Young moved back into the top 10 in assists per game with a 2.0 average, while Brian Phipps is ninth in the country with an 8.28 goals-against average.

• Congratulations are in order for Phipps. The senior from Annapolis, Md., earned two honors at the athletic department's annual President's Cup Brunch on April 25. All 27 head coaches vote for student-athletes nominated for individual year-end awards and Phipps was chosen for the Maryland Watch and as one of three recipients of the Silvester Watch. The Maryland Watch is given annually to the male athlete of the year, while the Silvester Watch is given to the Maryland student-athlete who typifies the best in college athletics.

• Grant Catalino reached a significant milestone this past weekend vs. Fairfield. His five points gives him 50 for the season, marking the first time he's hit that plateau. In the 85-year history of Maryland men's lacrosse there have only been 32 times, including Catalino, that a player has reached the 50-point mark.

• Ryan Young also reached a personal milestone, hitting the 40-point mark, which ties his career high. Young continues to crank out assists and is just nine away from tying Joe Walters for the most in the "Cottle Era."

• John Haus also made some news with his 10th goal of the season. The freshman from Lutherville, Md., is the first Maryland freshman midfielder to score 10 or more goals in a season since Brian Zeller had 12 in 1997.

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The Fairfield Game:

• Anyone that was at the game or watched on Terps TV surely noticed that pink was a predominant color for the Terps last Saturday. For the first time ever, the Maryland men's lacrosse team played a "Power In Pink" game as a part of Under Armour's Power In Pink campaign to raise awareness and funds for the fight against breast cancer.

It's important to remember, especially in these times when the sport of lacrosse and those who play it are under the microscope, that these student-athletes do a lot in terms of community service. The pink Maryland lacrosse shooting shirts the team wore before the game, the pink shoe laces, the pink wrist bands and the PIP shirts the coaching staff wore on the sidelines made this event standout, but this is just one thing that these student-athletes do for community service.   

• Many in the media thought this might be a trap game for Maryland and it very well could have been, but in the end it was a resounding victory for the Terps. I'm not going to go into the play of guys like Grant Catalino, Ryan Young and Brett Schmidt (those guys are recognized every week and will be mentioned a little later in this blog). I want to get into some guys who don't get mentioned weekly.

For several weeks now Coach Cottle has been talking about the effort and commitment of the team's reserves and scout team that have not seen a lot of playing time in actual games. He hoped to get a game that he could get them some much deserved playing time and he got it vs. the Stags. There are about a dozen or so guys that fit this description, but I want to get into a few of them here.

- First, it was fitting that Fran Gormley scored the game's final goal on Senior Day. Gormley was a freshman on the 2007 team and took two years away from the program before coming back this season via a tryout. But if you watch him with the rest of his teammates, it's as if he never left.

- Bryn Holmes did some campaigning last week and it paid off on Saturday. All week he was telling coaches, teammates and anyone who would listen how much improved Curtis Holmes has been taking face-offs. Curtis went out and won 5 of 11 draws and had three groundballs. The youngest Holmes brother is now 9 of 17 on the season for a .529 winning percentage.

- If you ever get out to a practice you'll probably hear someone yell, "Shane-saw," at some point. And, if you watched Shane Hall play on Saturday you'll know why. Hall is a junior close defender who plays like the Tasmanian Devil with a long pole. He is constantly on his opponents hands and is throwing checks like there's only so many allowed in a game and he's going to get in as many as he can, while he can. That frenetic style allowed Hall to get one groundball and cause one turnover.

- Michael White is, like Hall, a junior close defender in the unfortunate position of playing behind three junior starters at close defense. White has improved tremendously over the past three years and has taken a leadership role on the defensive scout team. He played much of, if not all of, the fourth quarter vs. Fairfield and finished with one groundball.

- Mark White played the final 15:51 in the cage for the Terps and made his first save since Feb. 26, 2008 vs. Mount St. Mary's. The life of a back-up goalie is not an enviable one, so seeing White finally get some real playing time was great. With his performance vs. the Stage, he managed to trim nearly a full goal from his career goals-against average and increased his save percentage by more than 10 percentage points.

- Finally, it was great to see Mike Poiter not only get on the field, but score his first career goal. Like Gormley, Poiter is behind the likes of Catalino, Young, Travis Reed, Will Yeatman and probably even Owen Blye and Joe Cummings on the attack depth chart, but everyday at practice he goes out there and makes plays. It's good to see him finally get a chance to do it in a game.

• It was great to see Andy Copelan again in College Park. The former Terp assistant coach (2006-08) is in the process of building a program at Fairfield and seems to have things going in the right direction. The Stags played without three of their regular starters, including their leading scorer, but I'm not sure that would have made much of a difference on Saturday. The Terps were clicking on all cylinders, offensively and defensively, and showed no signs of a letdown in their first non-rivalry weekend game since playing Bellarmine on Feb. 20.

• As mentioned earlier, the game was Senior Day for the Terps. Nine seniors were honored prior to the game and one, who will go unnamed, was honored prior to Friday's practice. Brian Phipps and Bryn Holmes were terrific, as Terp fans have come to expect. Adam Sear did what he's done all season long - score a man-up goal (he has a team-leading seven EMO scores this year). Dan Halayko and Dean Hart were solid in helping hold the Stags scoreless for two stretches of 20-plus minutes and we've touched on Gormley's day. Will Yeatman missed the game due to a concussion suffered in the ACC semis vs. North Carolina, but he is expected to return soon.

The "surprise" senior was Chris Ready, who has been listed all year as a junior on the Terps' roster. Ready has been out all season due to a knee injury and can often be seen running (or trotting) around the practice field as part of his rehab. He has one year of eligibility remaining, but he will be graduating this month. He is not sure if he will be returning to Maryland for graduate school and the coaching staff wanted to make sure he was honored for his contributions to the program. Ready came to Maryland as a short stick d-middie, but was converted to long pole prior to the 2009 season. That move proved to be significant due to Brian Farrell's injury and Brett Schmidt's move to close defense. Ready ended up being the team's No. 2 long pole last season and did an admirable job considering he'd been playing the position for less than nine months.

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The Colgate Game:

• This game is part of the Indians Rock Day of Champions event at Manhasset High School. Tickets and information can be purchased by clicking here.

• This will be the first-ever meeting between the Terps and the Red Raiders. That doesn't bode well for Colgate. Maryland is 70-4 all-time in first-ever meetings with the last loss coming in 1982 to Adelphi. The other three losses all came in the 1920's.

• This is also a homecoming for Ryan Young, who is from Manhasset, N.Y. He played his senior year at Manhasset High School and was recipient of the Bill Rich Award, which is given to the top attackman on Long Island. The trip home is also important for Young because it will mean that he can play in person with his mother, Maria, in the stands. Her strength while battling this disease has been an inspiration.

• One other thing Terps fans can look forward to is the return of Will Yeatman to the line-up. Yeatman has been out since the ACC semis, but returned to the practice field today and doesn't appear to have lost a step. He will be a big factor for the Terps in the playoffs and this will be a good chance for him to get back into the flow of the game.

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That's it for this week. I'll try to have an update from Long Island on Friday. Game notes will be posted on Thursday. Have a great week!