Johns Hopkins Ends 5-Game Losing Streak Against Maryland

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Johns Hopkins couldn’t have made a better deal Saturday at SECU Stadium. It hauled home a hefty wooden crab trophy and left behind the longest losing streak in its 125-game series against Maryland.

Plus, the Blue Jays demonstrated just how far they’ve come since this time last season, besting the Terrapins 12-11 before 6,594 almost a year to the day of one of the most humbling losses in program history.

Jacob Angelus scored three goals and Russell Melendez added two goals and three assists as Hopkins (11-4, 4-1) clinched a share of the Big Ten’s regular-season title and locked up the No. 2 seed in the conference tournament.

“We’ll probably end up seeing those guys again,” said Angelus, whose team had dropped five in a row over the last two seasons to the Terps. “We know that, but it’s a good feeling. We’ll enjoy it now, and we’ll enjoy a bye week. There’s so much ahead for us, and that’s what we’re looking forward to, not just tonight.”

The loss cost Maryland (8-4, 3-2) a bye into the Big Ten semifinals, which will be played May 4 at Johns Hopkins. Instead, the Terps will be the No. 3 seed and play host to Rutgers next Saturday in the quarterfinals. The winner will face Hopkins.

Braden Erksa and Daniel Maltz both scored four goals for Maryland in a game that featured 10 ties.

“I felt like we looked like a team with a lot of guys playing in this game for the first time,” Maryland coach John Tillman said. “I thought some of the guys played very well, and I just think we made some uncharacteristic mistakes.”

It was almost impossible from the outside not to look at this as a bit of a barometer for Hopkins, which has enjoyed a resurgence under third-year coach Peter Milliman and has won seven of eight.

It came after a challenging series of seasons, starting with an 8-8 showing in 2019 that ended in a blowout loss to Notre Dame in the NCAA tournament. The Blue Jays went 2-4 the following year before the pandemic halted the season, and the school fired longtime coach Dave Pietramala later that spring.

There was no fall ball in Milliman’s first season to comply with health and safety protocols — a suboptimal scenario with a new coach — and Hopkins struggled to a 4-9 mark against a Big Ten-only schedule. The Blue Jays progressed to 7-9 last year, still far off their historical standard. And they also absorbed a 22-7 loss to Maryland at home exactly 364 days before this season’s trip to College Park.

The contrast between the most lopsided home loss in Hopkins’ storied history and a victory to secure a piece of a championship almost a year later is inescapable.

“It’s a fair comparison, and I don’t want to say that it’s not, but I don’t want really any of that measuring stick to involve us right now,” Milliman said. “I just want us to focus on the 2023 Jays and appreciate our experience together. I think if there’s any relevance to that, it’s that I really feel like all those guys are still with us tonight, and I think that was a really hard day. It was a tough day to be a Blue Jay, and I felt for all the guys that were experiencing that with us.

“I just hope they all can appreciate and be a part of this tonight, because it was a program win.”

Fair enough. It speaks to a program in good health in all areas, one driven by a mantra not centered as much on stars as role players.

Against Maryland, the Blue Jays turned to Tyler Dunn after the Terps’ Luke Wierman won the game’s first four faceoffs. Dunn went 14 of 23 against the Terps’ star the rest of the way, ensuring wings like Alex Mazzone (eight ground balls) had a say in determining plenty of possessions.

Hopkins received multi-goal games from five players, including the first hat trick of the season from the table-setting Angelus. No one took more than seven shots; seven players took at least three.

And then there was a defense that pestered Maryland into seven turnovers in the fourth quarter and bottled up the Terps’ offensive midfield throughout the evening.

“We were extremely aggressive all night, and I think in the first three quarters, we may run a little past where we needed to,” goalie Tim Marcille said. “I think that fourth quarter, we really just dialed in and were ball hawks. They were moving together and forcing them to move the ball rather than allowing them just to beat us.”

All Hopkins really needed was a bit of a cushion, which Melendez provided when he made it 12-10 with 3:51 to go. Staked to the game’s only two-goal lead, Hopkins had some margin for error — which was needed when Maltz deposited a Daniel Kelly feed with 54 seconds to go.

Maryland won the next faceoff and called timeout, but sophomore Zach Whittier threw a pass over Erksa’s head with 17 seconds to end the Terps’ hopes of forcing overtime.

It was the last bit of inconsistency from Maryland, but hardly the only one for a team that generated plenty of transition chances in the final period but couldn’t reliably convert them into goals.

If Hopkins is in a much different place than last year, so is Maryland. The Terps, loaded with fourth- and fifth-year players, were undefeated national champions and a generational team in 2022. This team is younger, more untested, more unpredictable. And as it heads into the last weekend in April, it hasn’t strung together a winning streak longer than three.

“It’s turned into a little bit of a pattern: We win a couple, have some good performances and then have a letdown,” Maryland long pole John Geppert said. “At this point, it’s win-or-go-home for us, so that phase of this season needs to come to an end. It’s really about playing disciplined lacrosse at this point. Too many turnovers and empty possessions in the middle of the field, and it’s not always the offense.”

Hopkins, too, enters a different portion of its season. Armed with a piece of its first conference regular season title since 2015, the Blue Jays’ year-over-year progress is undeniable. Saturday’s victory is only the latest piece of evidence.

“It’s been great so far, and it’s definitely different than what I’ve been used to and what my senior class has been used to,” Angelus said. “It’s great to find an identity finally and kind of play off that. I feel like we have a team that’s playing hard for each other and not just themselves.”