Denver’s 14-12 victory at Ohio State felt different than recent tight losses to Jacksonville, North Carolina and Yale, because winning always feels different than losing.

But did it look different anywhere other than the scoreboard? Not especially.

And maybe that’s the key to understanding the 4-4 Pioneers, who close out non-conference play Saturday at home against Towson before delving into a five-game Big East slate confined entirely to April.

“What I have learned is that we’re a resilient group,” Denver coach Bill Tierney said. “We’re still pretty erratic. We still make the same mistakes we made in the first week, but I think our trajectory is heading in the right direction.”

After four-plus decades of college coaching, Tierney would know. But it’s nonetheless fascinating that aside from a blowout of Canisius and a thumping at Duke, Denver has consistently found itself in games with three-goal margins or less in the fourth quarter.

Throughout Tierney’s tenure in the Mile High City, the Pioneers have won their share of those games. But heading into last week, Denver found itself at 3-4 after a 16-13 loss to Yale — the first time it was under .500 more than three games into a season since going 7-8 in 2009, the last season before Tierney’s arrival.

The Pioneers’ reaction in the aftermath of that setback was arguably more heartening to Tierney than the actual victory in Columbus a week later.

“When we lost to Yale last week, a lot of teams that are used to not being 3-4 start pointing fingers, blaming each other, all of that other stuff,” Tierney said. “We implored upon the guys to stick together, and we really didn’t have to do that. They were sticking together.”

There were on-field developments that were encouraging as well. Richmond transfer Richie Connell delivered as a zone-buster in place of Johnny Marrocco, depositing four goals on six shots. Goalie Jack Thompson made 11 stops to raise his save percentage to .476 — still off last year’s .561 mark, but still an improvement on where things stood at the end of February.

And in the big picture, Denver landed a quality road victory with the potential to prove useful in May, something that remains well off for a team still figuring itself out.

“I don’t think of the Ohio State victory as, ‘OK, we’re finally here,’” Tierney said. “But I also never thought [after] North Carolina, Jacksonville and Yale, ‘Oh, we’ll never be back.’ You see the rankers and the prognosticators and all that kind of stuff, and I’ve been on both sides of that for years, not taking into account who you’re playing. So for the first time in a long time, we’re outside the Top 20. We never talked about that, just like we never talked about it when we were No. 1, 2, 3 or 4.”

Most years, of course, Denver already appears well on its way to an NCAA tournament berth. That’s still to be determined for this group of Pioneers, who remain predictable in some ways and unpredictable in others roughly midway through the season.

“We’ve always said the tough early season non-conference schedules have always been what we do,” Tierney said. “Most years after eight games, we’ve been at worst 5-3, 6-2, 7-1. This year we weren’t. This year we’re 4-4, and we were 3-4. It’s new, and it’s something [where] we have to see what we’re made of, and we’re going to find that out on Saturday.”

HOYAS MAKING SMALL CHANGES

Georgetown coach Kevin Warne promised an uncomfortable spring break for his team after its turnover-filled loss to Princeton earlier this month.

He did not promise radical changes. After all, it’s not as if the Hoyas have encountered too many difficulties so far this season.

Sure enough, Georgetown (6-1) has bounced back with consecutive victories over Richmond and Utah, in large part because the Hoyas still have strengths scattered all over the field.

There is the veteran defense, the proven goaltender, the effective faceoff unit and a balanced offense, all of which have had their moments in the first half of the season.

“This was Game 7,” Warne said. “You’re seeing after seven or eight games all over the country and people are doing different things. It’s a game of chess, but also we can’t be robots and say, ‘Because they’re doing this, we have to do that.’”

Saturday’s 16-6 defeat of Utah offered a glimpse of exactly how the Hoyas tick.

They kept an up-tempo team from generating too many quality transition opportunities. Goalie Owen McElroy stopped 12 shots. Four players had multi-goal games, including Dylan Watson (four), Graham Bundy Jr. (three) and Alex Trippi (three).

And they figured things out on the fly, responding to an unusual miscue — getting called for two offsides penalties on the same play, leading to the Utes closing within 4-2 — with three goals in the final two minutes of the first half and another five in a row to open the third quarter to put things away.

“I think it’s just consistency,” Bundy said. “I thought we were getting good looks, just not burying them. We got a little selfish there and took shots we could get whenever we wanted them, and down the stretch, we started passing up on those opportunities and banged it around a couple more times.”

It’s an approach that will serve the Hoyas well on the back half of the regular season. Georgetown already owns road victories over Notre Dame and Penn, and the Hoyas have trips to Lehigh and Denver the next two weeks.

“We’re trying to get a little more depth, and I think you saw more guys play,” Warne said. “It’s good that they’re contributing in a positive way. Then I feel like we’ve changed some things and gotten a little bit smarter and a little bit more patient. You have to learn. I think we learned our lesson and moved on from that.”

NUMBERS OF NOTE

19

Saves for St. Bonaventure goalie Brett Dobson in a 7-6 victory at Marist on Saturday to open Metro Atlantic play. Dobson has five games of at least 19 saves and leads the country with a .660 save percentage.

41

Combined goals in Princeton’s 21-20 overtime defeat of Penn, an Ivy League record for a conference contest. It was the first time either team played in a game that saw both teams reach the 20-goal plateau.

53

Years between victories over Johns Hopkins at Homewood Field for Navy, which upended the Blue Jays 11-10 on Friday. The Midshipmen had lost 22 consecutive games at Homewood prior to Friday, and their last road victory against Hopkins was on May 10, 1969.

148

Career points for Jacksonville’s Jack Dolan, a school record. Dolan (77 goals, 71 assists) used a three-goal, three-assist day Saturday at UMass Lowell to pass Eric Applegate’s program record of 143 points.