BALTIMORE --- Virginia went to halftime Saturday night tied with Johns Hopkins, an improvement over modest deficits the last three weekends.

The Cavaliers had six players with a goal, and they’d done an adequate job holding Blue Jays attackmen Kyle Marr and Cole Williams in check.

Still, one thing stood out as an issue to coach Lars Tiffany, something with the potential to differentiate this Virginia team from some recent iterations.

“We challenged our attackmen at halftime,” Tiffany said. “We take a lot of pride in the way we ride, but at halftime, Hopkins was perfect [on clears]. I said Michael [Kraus], Ian [Laviano] and Matt [Moore] — 2, 3, 5 — we need more pressure. You know my analogy with the pass rush. You have to get to their quarterback and create some errant passes, and that was a big part of our ability to surge ahead.”

And surge the Cavaliers (6-2) eventually did, claiming a 16-11 victory at Homewood Field for their most lopsided victory ever at Hopkins. Kraus, Moore and Dox Aitken each scored three goals, while Laviano, Ryan Conrad and Petey LaSalla each deposited two goals in the victory.

Joey Epstein scored five goals for Hopkins (4-4), which committed nine of its 16 turnovers in the second half after the Cavaliers escalated their pressure.

It took some time for it to fully pay off. Hopkins held an 8-7 lead before the Cavaliers rattled off three goals in a row. Virginia managed to bump the edge to 12-9 by the end of the third quarter when Kraus intercepted a pass behind the net and zipped it past Blue Jays goalie Ryan Darby (12 saves).

“We weren’t getting a ton of great riding opportunities, but as the game progressed we realized if we kept one more midfielder on and we could take away one of their midfielders, we could get three of our attackmen up to get a lot of pressure on them and we were able to get a couple of cheap ones,” Conrad said.

Much was made of Tiffany’s embrace of a throwback, frenetic scheme in his final years at Brown, and it is part of the appeal that ultimately led him to Charlottesville. Last year, his second with the program, the Cavaliers returned to the NCAA tournament after a two-year hiatus and fueled thoughts this year’s edition could accomplish even more.

Virginia has made a habit during its five-game winning streak — its longest since early in the 2014 season — of dominating the latter stages of games. Saturday proved to be different only in that the Cavaliers created some distance between themselves and Hopkins, a rarity in a series that has seen five overtime games since 2012.

It was a 9-2 burst that finished this game off as Hopkins endured a second-half fade for the third weekend in a row.

“We’ve done the same thing the other way,” Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala said. “Against Delaware, we came out in the second half and we build a lead and we take our foot off the gas pedal and we wind up giving up a couple goals and turning the ball over, and the goalie gets hot. We did the same thing in the Syracuse game. This is something we have to fix — our lapses in the third quarter and parts of the fourth are really hurting us.”

The identity Tiffany wanted to forge at Virginia revolved around permitting his players freedom on the field. And without question, a gifted set of offensive stars has made the Cavaliers exceptionally dangerous.

The willingness to push the pace off faceoffs — as LaSalla did while securing his first multi-goal game, including a behind-the-back shot to make it 15-10 — is a familiar concept from Tiffany’s Brown days. And Virginia’s eagerness on defense is a stark departure from recent years, when the Cavaliers were routinely pelted at that end of the field.

But the ride is a more subtle facet of what Virginia wants to accomplish. It’s easy to point out Aitken spinning off a defender to create an open look or Conrad scoring in transition or Moore zipping in a shot from 10 yards out as part of what the Cavaliers are trying to accomplish.

If Virginia can generate a couple easy goals off the ride, as it did Saturday, it makes it all the more dangerous as it ventures into the second half of the season.

“We weren’t really getting to their hands,” Kraus said. “We were letting them make 40-yard passes that they could break our ride with. At halftime, we just emphasized amping up that energy and I think that came to fruition. It allowed us to get second opportunities we needed and just sparked our energy and gave our defense more of a rest. It helps in a tremendous way.”