Is Hopkins Back? Maybe. Possibly. Kinda. Sorta.

BALTIMORE — The sun shone over Homewood Field as Johns Hopkins warmed up Tuesday before its game against North Carolina. And good heavens, it felt like it had been a long while since things seemed so bright for the Blue Jays.

Hopkins, college lacrosse’s lodestar for decades upon decades, has endured three losing seasons and a coaching change this decade. It hasn’t reached the postseason since 2019, hasn’t won an NCAA tournament game since 2018 and hasn’t played on the final weekend of the season since 2015.

The short term is enough to obscure the absence of a Memorial Day victory lap for 16 years, a drought closing in on the 18 years the Blue Jays went without a championship between 1987 and 2005 — which at the time felt like an eternity by the lofty standards at Homewood.

So, the hint of Hopkins possibly becoming Hopkins again thanks to early victories at Jacksonville and at home against Georgetown ratcheted the intrigue. A three-goal halftime lead Tuesday only added to it.

And then North Carolina dominated the second half of an 11-7 victory, and the parlor game of assessing whether “HOPKINS IS BACK?!?!” took on a new wrinkle.

The best available answer?

Maybe. Possibly.

Kinda. Sorta.

It isn’t satisfying, but it isn’t far off.

“Maybe the biggest takeaway is this is an opportunity for growth,” Hopkins coach Peter Milliman said. “We have to find a way to get a little bit tougher, make better decisions while we are playing hard and competing. I think [North Carolina]’s a team where maturity plays a big factor. For us, we’re still taking those steps.”

The Blue Jays (2-1), who visit Loyola (1-0) on Saturday, won’t be defined by a single game in part because of what’s to come. Not only do the Greyhounds loom, but so do Virginia and Syracuse, Navy and Delaware, the Big Ten gauntlet of Rutgers and Ohio State and Maryland, and more.

Put another way, deciphering Georgetown’s defense didn’t make Hopkins’ season, and getting frazzled by North Carolina’s 10-man ride and making a spate of questionable decisions in the second half Tuesday didn’t break it.

That’s good, because it’s far too early for either to happen. And it’s appropriate, because there’s so much new about the Blue Jays that reaching any definitive conclusions would be foolhardy.

Only four of Hopkins’ starters from its season-ending loss at Maryland in last year’s Big Ten tournament are still on the roster. Defenseman Alex Mazzone (Georgetown) and attackman Russell Melendez (Marquette) were vital transfer additions. Goalie Tim Marcille, whose starting experience prior to this year was four games in 2021, has made at least 15 saves in all three outings.

“One of the things with us this year is we have a lot of new leaders,” senior attackman Jacob Angelus said. “We had a lot of guys in our last senior class and grad years that had big voices on this team, and we have a lot of new voices, a lot of new guys starting, a lot of new guys playing.”

It lends itself to variability, which Hopkins has displayed. It smothered Jacksonville 12-7, found a way to outscore Georgetown 13-12 and held North Carolina in check before becoming unglued toward the end Tuesday.

But even then, Hopkins led going into the fourth quarter, was tied with nine minutes to go and squandered a two-man advantage with less than six minutes left while trailing 9-7.

In short, the Blue Jays didn’t get pummeled, and even at their worst (so far), they found themselves in a winnable situation until late.

“Maturity and discipline is a big thing when you’re playing against a team that chaotic,” Marcille said. “They play really fast, and I think we lost ourselves.”

For one night, anyway. Yet the three-game sample suggests that even if Hopkins isn’t necessarily back in a go-ahead-and-book-travel-for-Philadelphia sort of way, it is decidedly better.

Much of that improvement appears to have come at the defensive end.

Hopkins allowed opponents to average 12.6 goals and shoot 30.2 percent last season (remove a 22-7 pounding by Maryland as an extreme outlier and those numbers dip to 12 goals and 28.8 percent). This year’s early returns? The Blue Jays are yielding 10 goals an outing and opponents are shooting just 23.6 percent.

Marcille has provided stability in the cage and even delivered the Blue Jays’ first goal from a goalie since 1986, and Mazzone (who starred at long pole at Georgetown) has provided an infusion of unrelenting energy to Hopkins’ close defense.

The offense feels a bit more unsettled. Garrett Degnon is a option known on attack after scoring 40 goals last year, and Angelus is the clear-cut table setter (his eight assists are already almost halfway to his total of 20 last season). Melendez is off to a fine start with five goals, and all six of Hopkins’ starters have between five and 10 points already.

The new pieces include offensive coordinator John Crawley, whose return to his alma mater was well-received in the offseason. It’s also one more variable in the development process that Milliman intuitively knows will take some time (even if he wishes it didn’t have to).

“I think it’s an element of every team,” Milliman said. “When you start a new year, a new season, it’s a new group, a new leadership dynamic, everything. So, you have to start over with some of those things. We have some guys that played some big minutes, but I also think this is the first time we’ve been the favorite or at least expected to be competitive in a top-level game in a little while. That may be the biggest element of maturity.”

At the very least, it’s one of the few definitive things about this Hopkins team. A quick start fostered actual external expectations — one that didn’t entirely exist coming off last year’s 7-9 season but blossomed as a sign of respect after two solid victories.

So, Hopkins might be back. Or it might not. It probably depends on the day, which still represents progress. The sort of mistakes the Blue Jays made Tuesday were bound to happen. Not making them again will be the yardstick of growth as the season unfolds.

“We really just needed to know how to compete in the top 10 if we expect to stay here,” Milliman said. “If we’re going to beat a top-five team, it can’t be luck. It can’t be random. We have to find ways to play that level of lacrosse consistently, and I think it’s partially the team development and the stage of the program. We have to find a way to earn our spot back there and demand that we stay there.”