Johns Hopkins Leans on Balance, Depth to Inch Closer to Former Glory

In the moments that followed John Hopkins’ 17-8 rout of Ohio State on Saturday, the men’s lacrosse team lingered, basking in the postgame adoration of hundreds of fans, including scores of lacrosse alumni lifted by a dominant Homecoming show.

One might say the Blue Jays had it coming to them. No one needed to remind the players that it has been a while — too long for a storied program that has won 44 national championships, nine NCAA titles and more lacrosse games (1,014) than any other school — since mid-April looked this good at Homewood Field.

Led by nine seniors, five graduate students, third-year head coach Peter Milliman and three assistants, ex-Hopkins players Jamison Koesterer, John Crawley and Brian Kelly, the Blue Jays’ mission since the fall of 2022 has been to leave three consecutive losing seasons in the dust.

As he soaked in the roars of the Hopkins faithful after the 10-4 Blue Jays had buried the Buckeyes, senior attackman Jacob Angelus looked back at the program’s recent rough times while celebrating the strong pulse that has finally returned.

On Saturday, the sixth-ranked Blue Jays visit third-ranked Maryland in the 125th renewal of the great rivalry. The Blue Jays, 3-1 in the Big Ten, are in a three-way tie for first place with Maryland and Penn State. The Hopkins-Maryland winner will earn at least a share of the regular season league title.

Johns Hopkins, which has clinched its first winning season since 2018, when the Blue Jays won their second and last Big Ten tournament, is 8-2 in its past 10 games.

“After all of the stuff we’ve been through, it’s a dream come true to have a season like this, to be part of this program,” said Angelus, the quarterback of the offense. “We’ve got so much togetherness. It’s taken a couple of years to build our identity. We’ve found it this year. We’re playing Hopkins lacrosse, playing hard for each other.”

Every lacrosse program dealt with the misery of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic pushed the NCAA to cancel spring sports in mid-March. The Blue Jays finished their aborted season 2-4.

A month later, 20-year head coach Dave Pietramala and Johns Hopkins mutually parted ways. Pietramala, who won a school-record 197 games and two NCAA titles at his alma mater, went 8-8 in his last full season at Homewood, Hopkins’ worst year since 2010.

Milliman left Cornell to take over at Hopkins.

The Hopkins administration ruled out a fall season in ’20, due to COVID concerns. Players were allowed to practice in pairs. Coaches primarily communicated with players via Zoom and could not meet in person with players until mid-January 2021. The Blue Jays went 4-9 that spring, playing a shortened season against only Big Ten opponents. In 2022, Hopkins finished 7-9.

In the last two straight losing seasons, the Blue Jays failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament. Since the tournament began in 1971, Hopkins otherwise had only suffered losing seasons in 1971 and 2010. The Blue Jays also failed to make the tournament in 2013 with a 9-5 record. The Blue Jays’ last appearance in an NCAA final four was in 2015.

“Since the pandemic hit, 2022 was the most relatively normal season, but it was a challenge. We still had new coaches trying to find some flow with us,” said attackman, grad student and co-captain Garrett Degnon, who leads the Blue Jays with 32 goals. “Now we’re further away from COVID, we’re comfortable with our new coaching staff and we’ve got good leadership that’s level and balanced, spread among the seniors and grad students.”

Milliman said having the first full normal offseason since he took the job has been a huge factor in the Blue Jays’ resurgence. Having outstanding transfers in junior attackman Russell Melendez (Marquette) and grad student and defenseman/LSM/FO wing Alex Mazzone (Georgetown) has helped notably.

Melendez ranks second on the team with 26 goals. Mazzone leads Hopkins with 57 ground balls and is tied with defensive midfielder Brett Martin for second with 14 caused turnovers, behind junior defenseman Scott Smith (17 CTs).

The Blue Jays have quietly, steadily built a deep, balanced, resourceful squad that has found various ways to win. Eight different players scored the first eight goals against Ohio State, and that type of sharing has not been uncommon. Ten players currently have at least six goals. Eleven have least seven points. Hopkins also has gotten 26 points (15 G, 11 A) from non-offensive players.

The Hopkins defense, coached by Koesterer (Class of ’07) in his third year back at Homewood, has held 13 of 14 opponents under its scoring average, while holding every opponent scoreless for a stretch of at least 10 minutes a combined 20 times so far in 2023.

Offensively, Angelus (team-high 34 assists) spearheads an unselfish unit that thrives on a heavy motion, read-and-react scheme with no shortage of picking under the direction of Crawley, a 2017 graduate who is back at Hopkins as a first-year offensive coordinator.  Midfielders Matt Collison (20 goals), Brendan Grimes (17 G, 13 A) and Jonathan Peshko (12 G, 5 A) complement each other well.

On midseason All-American lists, Hopkins barely registered.

“I don’t mind that at all. I want us to have the best role players in the country,” Milliman said. “We’re playing four guys on attack, seven or eight offensive midfielders, four or five defensive midfielders at times, three LSMs, three faceoff guys. I don’t know if we do anything great, but we do a lot of things well, like balancing our scoring. And we keep fighting and challenging our opponents.”

Another telling trend reveals the Blue Jays’ ability to make plays in the clutch. During Hopkins’ 5-1 stretch preceding their Ohio State rout, it outscored six opponents in the final 10 minutes of the fourth quarter by a 21-5 margin.

“We are searching for more consistency throughout the game, but we’ve made things happen late and gotten out with some wins,” Crawley said.  “It’s been really cool to be around the leaders getting us in position to win games. I think we’ve got a group who are sick of losing, especially the seniors.”

Defensive midfielder Jack Hawley, a graduate student and co-captain who has thrived this year as a faceoff wingman, says the coaching presence of three Hopkins grads — Brian Kelly, from the class of ’93, also was brought in as an assistant last year — has given the program an extra shot of juice.

“They understand what we go through every day at a tough school like this. We’re pretty aware of the Hopkins tradition,” Hawley said. “We were a little concerned with how that might change after the old coaches left and what everything would look like. But the hours that Coaches K and Kelly and Crawley put in and how passionate they are about our success is real.

“As a senior class [with more eligibility remaining], we have been through a lot together. Going back to the fall, we were unified on and off the field, with high expectations. We set goals to win the Big Ten and a national championship. We have a class of guys with a tremendous sense of urgency to perform in a way that we’re capable of. All we can control is how hard we prepare week to week.”

The goal is to simply continue doing what Hopkins does best — a little bit of everything.

“Everyone is involved. Everyone has a role,” Angelus said. “We know we’re not perfect. We don’t have the most skilled and talented players. What we have is a great coaching staff and a great system and we play together, for each other. This is fun and exciting to be a part of.”