With just over 13 minutes left in the first half of its Sunday game against Drexel, Loyola called a timeout.

The Greyhounds owned a 6-3 lead, but in the span of a minute, the Dragons won two draw controls and scored back-to-back goals. Earlier in the season, they’d struggled to make the necessary in-game adjustments when their plans didn’t work as intended, and it cost them — early losses to Syracuse and Towson led to an 0-2 start.

The message in that timeout huddle was clear. If they wanted to take down a Drexel team that entered the game unbeaten, they had to turn it around this time.

And they did. After the timeout, Loyola won three draw controls and scored four times, enough to go into halftime up 10-6. In the second frame, it found the back of the net three times in a four-minute stretch and won the draw battle 11-3, its best half in the circle this season.

It was enough to give the Greyhounds a 17-12 win, their fourth in a row. It continues their strong rebound after a shaky start to 2021.

“We’re starting to see some improvement in the areas we’ve been looking for as a coaching staff, and that’s always nice when you come out of a game and feel that way,” coach Jen Adams said. “We’re starting to hit a little bit of our rhythm.”

Loyola started the season as a projected top-five team, returning 10 starters from its 5-0 campaign in 2020. But it struggled in its first two matchups of the season — an 18-6 loss to the Orange on Feb. 20, and then a 13-7 defeat to in-state rival Towson on Feb. 24 — and finished each of those games with more turnovers than goals or draw controls.

Its Feb. 28 game against then-No. 6 Florida was canceled due to COVID-19-related issues inside the Gators’ program, so the Greyhounds found themselves with a full week to mentally and technically fix the issues that dragged them down against their first two opponents.

“We [focused] on a lot of discipline in terms of what we were doing with the ball,” Adams said. “Valuing our possessions a lot more, whether it was being on the 8-meter or in transition and not forcing things. We had way too many turnovers against really great sides, so we were trying to close that gap a bit.”

When they returned to action against Villanova on March 3, they managed to not only hold onto the ball more, but score it, leaving with an 18-6 win. Three days later, they put on an offensive show against American, scoring 15 goals in the first half to ultimately set up a 21-4 victory.

Preseason All-American attacker Livy Rosenzweig had contributed only in the assist column in both the Syracuse and Towson games, just the third and fourth times she’s been held scoreless in her record-setting career at Loyola.

But as her team has found its rhythm since those losses, so has she — Rosenzweig has 17 goals in the last four games, including six in the weekend win over the Dragons.

“She struggled a little bit in terms of putting points on the board, and that’s something very unfamiliar to Livy Rosenzweig, and unfamiliar to us as a program,” Adams said. “She really stepped out of those couple games, and I’m excited that she was able to get out of her mental funk. That’s a difficult thing to do as a really great athlete, and that’ll continue to serve her well as we continue to go down the road here.”

The No. 12 Greyhounds’ regular-season slate features just five more games, all against Patriot League opponents. A road trip to Bucknell on Saturday is up next.

Loyola currently sits at the top of the conference’s South Division. The top two teams from each division will make this year’s four-team Patriot League championship tournament.

“I say it year in, year out, but we want to be playing our best lacrosse come the end of May. That takes gradual improvement, and figuring out in both wins and losses things that we need to sew up,” Adams said. “I think we’ve had really challenging good games, and the Patriot League games present another opportunity for that.”