COLUMBUS, Ohio — After last year’s national championship trip, Ohio State lost a lot of key pieces. But behind Tre Leclaire, now a sophomore, and the rest of the returning offense, the Buckeyes look like a team that can make another run.

Starting off with an 8-0 run against Boston University on Saturday, the Buckeyes pulled out a 15-9 victory in the Woody Hayes Athletic Complex indoor facility.

Leclaire credited “a lot of the younger guys today, JT [Bugliosi] and Jackson [Reid] to be specific.”

“Our defense also held up,” he said. “Heading into halftime with a big lead, we had to think of how we were going to respond.”

The win comes after a strong showing against Cleveland State a week ago, but a borderline top-20 team like the Terriers was more of a challenge on the non-conference slate. Despite the big lead early, BU fought back, which forced the Buckeyes to stay in the game.

Leclaire finished with three goals and an assist. Reid, a freshman attackman, led all scorers with four goals.

“Everyone was clicking today,” Leclaire said. “There’s still a lot of work to do though, and that’s what we are going to do next week.”

Dominating at the faceoff X is one thing, but holding BU to just one win in the first half is an uncommon dominance at the Division I level. Ohio State’s duo of Christian Feliziani and Justin Inacio combined to win 16 of 27 draws overall.

With seven straight goals in the opening frame, the Buckeyes showed a determination that fans came to know last season in their run to the NCAA title game, an eventual loss to Maryland, even without some key players from that run.

The Buckeyes offense lost Eric Fannell, Austin Shanks, Johnny Pearson, Colin Chell and J.T. Blubaugh from last year’s run. With 28 goals over their first two games, it doesn’t seem they’ve missed a beat.

“We always try to focus on our own brand of lacrosse,” midfielder Lukas Buckley said. “We’ll come in on Monday and look at what we did wrong. The score looks like we did well, and BU did really well too. But we just focus on what we can fix before we have momentum or anything like that.”

Leclaire scored two of this three goals back-to-back in the second quarter, ending any potential momentum the Terriers gained from a man-up goal by Jack Wilson.

Leclaire tallied three goals and a helper last week, and against BU, he produced the same results. His assist came on Jeff Henrick’s goal to close out the first quarter. After leading the team with 49 goals as a freshman, he’s looking to make a big leap this season and even further his game.

Facing BU sophomore goalie Joe McSorley was no picnic for Leclaire and his Buckeyes, either. In his second career start, McSorley, an athletic goalie who is hard to beat, made 13 saves, surviving the onslaught to keep the Terriers in it.

“Offensively, we wanted to keep the ball fast,” Leclaire said. “In sticks and out of sticks, we wanted to get quick shots off the back side, and I think we did that today.”

Even after graduating so much talent, the Buckeyes still look like contenders. An offensive explosion against Cleveland State and then Boston University is all part of the team finding itself in its non-conference slate.

“We haven’t seen them before,” Leclaire said. “There’s footage on them, but we just play the way we do every week.”

Ohio State continues its non-conference schedule against Hofstra next week, before traveling to Jacksonville.