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The Maryland men’s lacrosse team’s defense can apparently create a little offense, too.

Sophomore short-stick defensive midfielder Isaiah Davis-Allen scored two goals and three other defenders had one point each to power the No. 3 Terps to a 13-4 victory over visiting Michigan in Sunday’s Big Ten Conference opener for both teams at Byrd Stadium.

The defense also took care of its day job, preventing an opponent from scoring 10 goals for the eighth time in nine games.

“Thrilled for those guys because that’s really not what they’re all about,” Maryland coach John Tillman said of the defensive players who took the offensive. “They’ve been team guys, guys that work really hard, that are really selfless, and to their credit, guys that stayed after. Every day this week, we had a group of guys get after it on offense, and then these guys jumped in.”

Davis-Allen and freshman long-stick midfielder Matt Neufeldt were two players cited by Tillman for working with the offense after practice, and both players scored goals against the Wolverines.

“I think the extra work definitely helped out, but I think it’s something that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been trying to push it a little bit more,” Davis-Allen said. “It’s something that I think will come.”

Davis-Allen, who had entered the game with just five shots in 24 games, scored the first goal of his collegiate career off a faceoff after freshman midfielder Connor Kelly backhanded a feed from senior attackman Jay Carlson with 10:19 left in the first quarter.

Senior Charlie Raffa won the draw, but was stripped by a Wolverines player. Davis-Allen pounced on the loose ball and fired a laser from the right point to give Maryland a 2-0 lead with 9:59 remaining.

The Terps (8-1 overall and 1-0 in the Big Ten) increased their advantage to 3-0 when senior defenseman Casey Ikeda carried the ball from one end to the other and passed it to sophomore attackman Matt Rambo, whose riser from the right wing got under the crossbar with 30.3 seconds left in the period.

Both sides scored a goal in the second quarter, giving Maryland a 4-1 lead at halftime. But the Terps put away any notion of a Michigan comeback with four goals in a 1:27 span of the third quarter.

Included in that run was a goal by senior midfielder Joe LoCascio on an assist from sophomore defenseman Tim Muller with 8:01 remaining and Davis-Allen’s second goal of the game 11 seconds later.

Neufeldt scored the first goal of his career after picking up a ground ball off the opening faceoff just 17 seconds into the fourth quarter.

Maryland also got points from their usual producers. Rambo scored a game-high three goals, and Carlson, a St. Paul’s graduate, had three points on two goals and one assist.

Raffa, aided by Davis-Allen and Neufeldt on the wings, won 11 of 14 faceoffs and scooped a game-high six ground balls as the Terps won 15 of 21 faceoffs to dominate time of possession.

The Wolverines (4-5, 0-1) looked overmatched and played sloppily in the first half. Nine of the team’s 11 possessions in the first two quarters resulted in turnovers, one ended with Kelly backing up a Wolverines shot, and one was capped by junior midfielder Kyle Jackson converting a centering pass from freshman attackman Patrick Tracy with 1:07 left in the second quarter.

Michigan coach John Paul acknowledged he was surprised to see Maryland’s defensive players score.

“They hadn’t really shown that this year,” he said. “We rode aggressively at times. We had a 10-man ride at times, which I thought was pretty effective. But most of the time, we were dropping back. Nobody other than Yale this year really rode them at all, and Yale did a pretty good job. So they had to work to clear it. But we did not anticipate that their poles would run up. They hadn’t done that all year, and today, they did that. So that was a bit of a surprise.”

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