One of the sport’s finest rivalries could very well have produced a season-turning game for both participants Saturday.

Johns Hopkins rallied from a seven-goal halftime to deficit to secure a 15-13 victory at Virginia, a hint the Blue Jays’ offense will be a major force in the Big Ten in the next month.

“I don’t think a year ago, a Hopkins team comes back from that,” midfielder Joel Tinney said. “But this year, we’ve shown a lot of resilience as a team.”

The odd thing is Hopkins nearly did exactly the same thing last year against Virginia. The Blue Jays came back from a 10-4 deficit to secure a wacky 18-17 overtime triumph. This time, Hopkins was down 9-2 before uncorking runs of 6-0 and 7-0 in the second half.

It capped a perfect March that included blowouts of Princeton and Syracuse. But neither of those games featured as harrowing a situation as the one the Blue Jays faced at the midpoint against Virginia.

“I have great disappointment with how flat we were and the toughness we lacked in the first half,” coach Dave Pietramala said. “We got our tails kicked all over the field in the first half. I thought we kind of buckled down a little bit and then in the second half we played lacrosse the way we’re capable of. What we need to do is decide which team are we. Are we the first half team? Because we are that. Or are we the second half team? Because we are that.”

While Hopkins begins to figure out exactly who it is — and it could come into greater focus Sunday at Rutgers — Virginia needs to find some answers as well. The Cavaliers looked exceptional in the first half, with goalie Alex Rode anchoring a superb defensive effort.

But that same defense tired after the break, and Virginia may well have to defeat either North Carolina or Duke next month to find its way into the NCAA tournament. Given Virginia’s struggles in conference play — it is 1-21 in ACC regular season play since 2013 — Saturday represented a missed opportunity that would have helped in much more than the rankings.

“We lean on several men so much — Dox Aitken, Michael Kraus — and they stepped up big-time in a pressure-filled situation and we look to them to do that,” coach Lars Tiffany said. “We need others. And that’s maybe where the youthfulness of this team is transparent because we couldn’t quite make some of those other plays.”

Nike/US Lacrosse
Division I Men’s Top 20

Also considered (alphabetical order): Army, Colgate, Marquette, Navy, Ohio State, Penn State, Robert Morris, St. John's, Towson, Vermont

Nike/US Lacrosse Rankings

Division I Men | Division I Women
Division II Men | Division II Women
Division III Men | Division III Women

HOT

Syracuse (+7)

It’s anyone’s guess which version of the Orange is showing up on a given day. The one with a good offense popped up at Duke on Saturday and delivered a 15-14 victory, improving Syracuse to 2-0 in the ACC. It also left the Orange at 12-2 in one-goal games in their last 22 overall outings.

Both one of those numbers are important to keep in mind. The Orange has now defeated Virginia and Duke, which effectively assures it a place in the ACC tournament; the only way Syracuse doesn’t earn a spot is if there’s a five-way tie at 2-2 and goal differential decides who gets left out. The Duke victory by itself might be enough to prop up Syracuse for NCAA tournament purposes.

The performance in one-goal games is a reminder of how thin a line the Orange has walked over the last two seasons. Three of its victories this year have come by a goal, while all of its losses have come by at least four goals. It makes Syracuse a tough team to gauge, but placing it ahead of Virginia and behind Albany, Johns Hopkins and Rutgers makes sense for now.

Bucknell (+4)

Congrats to the Bison for helping to turn the Patriot League into a giant scrum. Bucknell began its week with a one-goal loss at Penn, but bounced back to handled Loyola 12-11 on the road and throw the chase for home-field advantage in the Patriot into question. Connor O’Hara had four goals and Will Sands had a goal and four assists for the Bison.

Bucknell, Lehigh and Navy all sit at 4-1, with Loyola a half-game behind at 3-1. Among the notable Patriot League games still to come: Loyola-Lehigh (April 7) and Lehigh-Bucknell (April 20), though Army and Colgate (both 2-2) are still in the hunt for the top seed as well.

DOWN

Loyola (-4)

Pat Spencer isn’t going to score 12 points every game, but with Jay Drapeau, Kevin Lindley and Aidan Olmstead combining for seven goals and five assists, the Greyhounds mustered enough offense to turn back Bucknell and sit alone atop the Patriot League.

Instead, Loyola was let down by its defense as Bucknell made nearly one out of three shots (12 of 37) and damaged the Greyhounds’ chances of hosting an NCAA tournament game. Charley Toomey’s team gets its next three on the road (Colgate, Lehigh and Georgetown, the latter in a makeup of a game postponed last week), and it will be curious to see how Loyola responds in that tough 11-day stretch.

Lehigh (-4)

The Mountain Hawks hammered Hofstra 13-8 on Tuesday, which looked good until the Pride stumbled again over the weekend against St. John’s. Meanwhile, Lehigh took its first Patriot League loss, dropping a 10-7 decision to Navy thanks to Midshipmen goalie Ryan Kern’s 18 saves.

In a season in which so few teams can get traction, there might not be a better symbol of the relative parity than the Patriot League. Every week is a guessing game, and it may well be that the league’s top five or six teams are roughly equal. The next five weekends — the final four of Patriot play plus the league tournament —should prove curious.

IN

Cornell

Well, why not? The Big Red thumped Penn 20-13 in Philadelphia as Jeff Teat scored six goals and two assists and Jake McCulloch had a career-high eight points (five goals, three assists). Cornell closed the game on a 9-2 run, solving a Penn team that has created plenty of headaches with his methodical tempo and stingy defense.

This month, Cornell has knocked off Penn State and Penn and dropped two-goal decisions against Albany and Yale. It might be a year early for the Big Red to contend for a place on Memorial Day weekend, but they’re already a factor in the Ivy League and could yet play their way into the conversation for an at-large bid.

Michigan

It was a big week for first-year coach Kevin Conry and the Wolverines, who extended their winning streak to five with a 13-12 upset of Notre Dame in South Bend before picking up a 9-6 victory at UMBC on Saturday.

Michigan heads into Big Ten play at 7-2, a game off last year’s pace that also included a noteworthy victory (over Penn). But this year’s Wolverines are better defensively, which should come as no surprise with Conry (who was the defensive coordinator of Maryland’s title team last spring) running the show. Conry’s old team comes to Ann Arbor on Saturday in another tough test for Michigan.

OUT

Hofstra

Lost to Lehigh and St. John’s to drop back to .500. Towson, which is coming off tight losses to Duke and Denver, arrives on Long Island on Saturday in what figures to be a bellwether game for the rest of the Pride’s season.

Army

The Black Knights dropped an 8-6 decision at Colgate and have some work to do to climb back toward the top of the Patriot League. Army’s remaining conference schedule — Bucknell, at Boston University, Navy, at Loyola —includes three of the four teams ahead of it in the Patriot League standings. That represents both a tough month to come and a plethora of opportunities for Joe Alberici’s team.