PHILADELPHIA — Senior long pole Mike Riis marched across Lincoln Financial Field amid his Denver lacrosse teammates’ revelry, a net snipped from one of the goals tucked into his shorts.

“It’s mine forever,” Riis beamed.

And Monday will always belong to the Pioneers, who claimed their first national lacrosse championship with a 10-5 victory over Maryland just six years after luring legendary coach Bill Tierney to the sport’s most westernmost outpost.

Wesley Berg scored five goals to earn the NCAA tournament’s most outstanding player honor and Ryan LaPlante made 13 saves for fourth-seeded Denver (17-2), which became the first school west of the Appalachians to win the championship in its 45-year history.

Denver had come close in recent years, falling in the semifinals in three of the past four years.

“Just like Wesley carried us on his back for a few games here, I feel like we were carrying a burden around and now it’s off,” Tierney said. “And now we move on.”

PHOTOS: University of Denver wins its first NCAA men’s lacrosse title

The Pioneers are known for their offensive diversity, but they rode a lockdown defense to seal Monday’s game. Denver never trailed, and held the sixth-seeded Terrapins (15-4) scoreless for 20:23 before the Terrapins tossed in a harmless goal with 32.6 seconds remaining.

“There was no way they were going to put up more than 10 goals in this game,” senior attackman Sean Cannizzaro said. “As long as we played OK and put up a couple goals, we knew we were going to win.”

Matt Rambo, Maryland’s leading scorer, had two goals and an assist as Christian Burgdorf marked him, while Carson Cannon helped hold midfielder Joe LoCascio to an assist and just three shots.

“For the 24 hours that we had, we were like, if we stop 1 (Rambo) and 5 (LoCascio), we’re going to win this game,” Riis said. “We stopped 1 and 5, and we did a great job.”

Faceoff specialist Trevor Baptiste and midfielder Zach Miller joined Berg, LaPlante and Riis on the all-tournament team.

Berg, the hero of Saturday’s overtime semifinal victory over Notre Dame, quickly asserted himself with a goal 40 seconds into the game. He completed his hat trick in less than 10 minutes, and the Pioneers had the luxury of dictating tempo from that point.

Denver took a 5-3 edge into the break, then rattled off the first three goals of the second half to all but seal it. Berg scored the first and last goals of the day in his final collegiate game, an appropriate cap to a career featuring a school-record 188 goals and a central place in program lore.

“It takes a while to sink in,” Berg said. “Obviously we knew we had it with about 30 seconds left with Trevor winning the faceoff and us being up that many. When you win something like this it can take a couple of weeks to really set in and really sink in that you won it.”

Whenever it does, it will be appreciated by players who were part of the program when it was shuttled from club to varsity status and back. The Pioneers loudly signaled their intent in 2009 to become a lacrosse power when they hired Tierney, who won six national championships at Princeton.

Tierney’s seventh NCAA title is the most ever for a men’s lacrosse coach, and he is the first coach to win championships at multiple schools.

“When we recruited Coach Tierney, we talked about the Rocky Mountains being a good backdrop, that there is no ceiling,” athletic director Peg Bradley-Doppes said on the field afterward. “He is the perfect person to lead us as we made the leap. This is a celebration of not only this team, not only Coach Tierney, but absolutely the decades of young men who built it.”

This year’s group, though, will be remembered as the breakthrough team. And given Tierney’s track record, the Pioneers are probably far from finished.

“It’s been unbelievable to see the growth of this program since coach T moved out to Denver,” LaPlante said. “We’ve made it to the playoffs every year. This just took it to the next level, and it shows just how good of a coach and how good of a coaching staff we have and the support we have from the university.”

Footnote: DU will hold a celebration of its championship at the Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium Tuesday evening at 6 p.m.