The Blue Jays have rallied from halftime deficits to defeat Virginia, Rutgers and Ohio State, and rolled into the postseason off the high of a Big Ten title game defeat of Maryland. But even some notable holes throughout the spring didn’t make it easy to climb out of an 8-3 hole against the Hoyas (12-5).
Georgetown, which claimed the Big East title last week, was making its first NCAA tournament appearance since 2007. And after spotting Hopkins a three-goal lead, the Hoyas looked like postseason veterans for much of the day.
Senior Craig Berge had two goals and four assists as Georgetown patiently dissected the Blue Jays’ defense. Meanwhile, goalie Nick Marrocco made 11 saves, including a sublime pair of stops in the final 25 seconds of the third quarter to preserve an 8-4 lead.
“It felt like he was making all the timely ones when they needed them,” Marr said.
Marr was one of several players Marrocco and the Hoyas stymied for much of the game. He, Stanwick and Cole Williams — the Blue Jays’ starting attack — combined to muster three assists over the first three quarters.
Georgetown warranted some of the credit thanks to its goalie play, its patient offense and faceoff man Peter Tagliaferri’s 15-for-23 day. But the Hopkins offense was tight and inexplicably out of sorts, looking little like the group that reached double figures in 11 of the previous 13 games.
“I’m sure somewhere along the line in the middle of the third quarter, someone was saying, ‘This is the same team as last year,’” coach Dave Pietramala said. “Clearly, this group has nothing in common. This is a much different team.”
Indeed, Hopkins absorbed a 19-6 drubbing against Duke in the first round at Homewood last season, closing out the year with losses in its regular-season finale (Maryland), the Big Ten semifinals and then the NCAA opener. It was the same lamentable script the Blue Jays followed in 2016, too.
This year was on a different trajectory, with a thrilling triple-overtime loss to Maryland followed by two victories in the Big Ten tournament. A feeble NCAA showing wouldn’t have erased that work, but it would have overshadowed it.
PHOTO BY JOHN STROHSACKER
Johns Hopkins attackman Kyle Marr scored five goals — all in the fourth quarter.
Marr finally got going, scoring five times in a span of 10 minutes to tie it at 9-9 with 4:03 to go. Georgetown, meanwhile, couldn’t generate much offense and sputtered in the clearing game as the Blue Jays’ ride created difficulties. The Hoyas were just 12-for-17 on clears for the day.
“Johns Hopkins’ experience kind of got to us,” Georgetown coach Kevin Warne said. “They just made a couple more plays. In an overtime game, you’re one play away.”
Hopkins made that one play at the end, with Stanwick charging in from Marrocco’s right side with 29.4 seconds left in overtime to clinch the Blue Jays’ first postseason overtime victory since 2009.
But if there was a common bond in this game, it was how far both teams had come from disappointing finishes the last few years.
Hopkins at least had been a postseason regular. Georgetown, once an NCAA tournament fixture, was lost in the wilderness for a stretch and endured a pair of miserable seasons in 2016 and 2017 that yielded a combined 6-22 record.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Berge said of his fellow seniors. “We were on the same page before the season started and we did things we really wanted to do. It’s a credit to the other 33 guys on our team. We were coming off two- and four-win seasons, and they didn’t have every reason in the world to listen to us. Those 33 guys trusted us and put their faith in us to know that we were going to bring them to the right spot.”
A conference title and a play away from advancing to the NCAA quarterfinals certainly qualifies.
“I couldn’t be prouder to be their head coach,” said Warne, the former Maryland defensive coordinator who enjoyed his best season in six years as a head coach. “They became change agents this year and they left our program in a better place than they found it.”
The same might be said of Hopkins, which earned its best postseason seed since 2012. At the very least, the Blue Jays are a far more capable bunch than at this stage last year, when they ended their season with their most lopsided loss at Homewood since 1954.
“A year ago, you saw it,” Pietramala said. “We were exhausted. We were awful. … We weren’t great today, but a year ago we couldn’t have done what we did today.”
Now, they’ll try to do even better, with the task of knocking Duke out of the postseason for the first time in four tries this decade. Hopkins comes into the quarterfinals from a different spot than it often occupies.
Looking around the tournament, Maryland is the defending champion, Albany has the breakout buzz, Yale was arguably the best team over the course of the full season and Duke might have the highest ceiling of anyone in the field.
“This is the group that no one talks about right now,” Pietramala said. “That’s fine with us.”