BIG EAST Champ Liberty to Take On Maryland in NCAA 1st Round
11/6/2022 11:38:27 PM | Field Hockey
2022 NCAA Division I Field Hockey Championship Bracket
Back-to-back BIG EAST champion Liberty is set to take on Maryland in the first round of the 2022 NCAA Division I Field Hockey Championship.
The No. 19 Lady Flames (12-7) will take on the Big Ten regular season co-champion No. 2 Terrapins (17-3), Friday at noon in the NCAA Sweet 16. The match will be held at the Maryland Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex in College Park, Md. The other matchup at the site will be No. 7 Princeton (13-4), the Ivy League champion, against No. 10 Syracuse (15-5).
Friday’s matchup between Liberty and Maryland is a rematch from the 2021 NCAA Final Four. Liberty edged Maryland 3-2 on Charlotte Vaanhold’s game-winning goal in double overtime, sending the Lady Flames to the first national championship game in any sport in Liberty Athletics history.
This will be the third-ever meeting between Liberty and Maryland. The other meeting aside from last year’s Final Four came in 2017 at the Maryland Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex. The Terrapins topped the Lady Flames 4-1 in that contest in what was head coach Nikki Parsley-Blocker’s first year as head coach at Liberty.
No. 2 seed Liberty defeated No. 1 seed Old Dominion 3-1 in Sunday’s BIG EAST Field Hockey Championship game on national television (FS1) to secure a bid to the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in program history. Azul Iritxity Irigoyen was selected as the BIG EAST Tournament Most Outstanding Player, and she was joined on the BIG EAST All-Tournament team by Bethany Dykema, Jodie Conolly and Martu Cian. Dykema scored the game-winning goal for Liberty in the win over ODU, Sunday.
Maryland fell 2-1 to No. 4 Northwestern in Friday’s Big Ten semifinal round.
Opening round games will be played on two campus sites, Wednesday. First and second round games will be played at four campus sites, Friday and Sunday. Connecticut will host the semifinals and final on Nov. 18 and 20 at the George J. Sherman Family Sports Complex in Storrs, Conn.
