Maryland is back in the NCAA Tournament semifinal, and the No. 3 seed now gets the program it has not seen in four years. The Terps will face No. 2 seed North Carolina on Friday at Martin Stadium in Evanston, Illinois, with first draw set for 3 p.m. on ESPNU.

The trip to Evanston gives Maryland a chance to keep moving toward its first title game since 2019 after a 14-10 win over Navy in the quarterfinals. It also sets up a meeting with the sport’s defending champion, a North Carolina team that finished the 2025 season 22-0 and won its fourth national title.

Cathy Reese did not dress up the challenge. Maryland has been good enough to get this far, she said, but not clean enough to take anything for granted. “We have not played a perfect game,” she said. “I mean, sometimes we don’t even play two good quarters.”

That is the task in front of Maryland against a North Carolina program that has become the standard under Jenny Levy. Levy has spent the last 31 years building the team from scratch, is the only coach in program history and is now the second-winningest women’s lacrosse coach of all time. The Tar Heels have won eight ACC titles under her and arrive with the kind of depth and firepower that usually leaves little margin for error.

North Carolina’s attack is led by Chloe Humphrey, who won the 2025 Tewaaraton Award as a freshman and leads the nation with 5.37 goals per game and 148 points. She also has 21 caused turnovers and 46 assists, a line that captures how hard she is to manage when she is scoring and setting up everyone else. Addison Patillo has added 69 points and 59 goals in 2026 while committing 19 turnovers, the fewest among North Carolina’s starting attackers, and Eliza Osburn has chipped in 48 points, 39 draw controls, 24 ground balls and 15 caused turnovers.

The numbers around the Tar Heels explain why they have spent the season looking almost impossible to pin down. North Carolina leads the ACC with 16.2 draw controls per game, causes 9.8 turnovers per game and commits the fewest turnovers per game in the league at 12.1. The result is a plus-196 goal differential, the kind of gap that usually belongs to a team with very few weak spots. Maryland and North Carolina have not played since 2020, which only adds to the uncertainty around Friday’s matchup.

North Carolina was also one overtime goal away from going undefeated through championship weekend again this season, a reminder that even the most dominant team in the bracket has not coasted. For Maryland, the assignment is simple and difficult at once: slow the pace, survive the first wave and make the game last long enough for its own experience to matter. If it does, the Terps will have a real shot at ending a four-year semifinal drought and reaching the title game for the first time in seven years.