BALTIMORE — As much as Dave Pietramala did not want the 60th meeting between the storied Johns Hopkins and Syracuse men’s lacrosse programs on Sunday to be about him, in many ways, it was.

When he walked off the field during pregame warmups, a familiar face from the glory days sought him out near the fence that surrounds Homewood Field. “I love you so much,” Miles Harrison, father of former Blue Jays star midfielder Kyle, said into Pietramala’s ear.

“It’s nice to see you,” Pietramala replied.

After the game, dozens of current Blue Jays wearing blazers — whom Pietramala recruited, and just coached against — greeted him and his girlfriend, Tina, on the hardscaped, brick patio outside the visitor’s locker room. They shared inside jokes, hugs and well-wishes.

“You played really well today,” Pietramala said to one. “I’ll be watching from afar,” he said to two others.

And in between, Pietramala stalked the sideline with familiar mannerisms. Yes, he argued the officials for a slashing call or two, except from a side of the field no one had been used to seeing him bark from in the previous two decades.

Likely before almost anyone recalls the final score — Johns Hopkins 10, Syracuse 7 — there is the enduring memory: This was the day that Pietramala, the former Blue Jays head coach and legendary defenseman, came back to Homewood for the first time.

Wearing a different, darker shade of blue. An orange block “S” on his hat. And a little gray in his goatee.

“It’s an odd situation,” Pietramala told USA Lacrosse Magazine, as the former players and a few parents stopped to talk after the game, “but it is what it is. It’s the world we live in. You’re at one place one minute and you’re in the next place another.”

For the first time since Pietramala and Johns Hopkins “mutually agreed to part ways” in April 2020 after 20 seasons, a program record 207 wins and two national championships at the helm of his alma mater, he returned — in the colors of a program that, aside from blood rival Maryland, might be the Blue Jays’ most bitter enemy.

Throw in the fact that he is now a defensive coordinator for Syracuse’s own legendary first-year head coach Gary Gait, the Canadian offensive spectacle ying for the Orange(men) to Pietramala’s Long Island long-stick yang at Hopkins as the game’s elite players in the 1980s, and you have a plot line fit for fiction.

But what we saw Sunday was real.

Petro, who in 2005 as a young-ish coach led his alma mater to its first NCAA title since it won when he was the nation’s best player in 1987, now wore an orange lanyard around his neck and blue Syracuse Lacrosse lettering and a gray sweatshirt on his torso.

Petro, who is still featured in the imagery of the Jays’ pre-game hype video played on the Homewood scoreboard (with Kyle Harrison and Paul Rabil highlights), put on a navy blue Syracuse hat when he emerged from the locker room at the start of the game.

And Petro, in the flow of the game, got lost in coaching up the defense, which is what he wanted most of all.

“This wasn’t about me,” Pietramala said. “For me, this was about our guys at Syracuse. It’s about the young men that are playing a game. Everybody can make a big deal of this. For me, it was about us trying to come down here and earn a win against a good team, and a team we’re probably similar to, as you could see, and trying to grow and develop.”

Indeed, they were similar-looking groups. The 1989 title game, when Gait’s Syracuse team beat Pietramala’s Jays in a 13-12 all-time Memorial Day classic, this was not. On a chilly day at Homewood in mid-March, the Orange and Blue Jays were frequently sloppy, combining for 35 turnovers and eight failed clears.

Syracuse, which fell to 2-4, had nearly every important statistical advantage (shots: 54-29; ground balls: 37-28; faceoff wins: 14-7; and seven fewer turnovers), but converted on only 12 percent of its shots and went scoreless for 17 minutes bridging the third and fourth quarters.

The Orange hit no less than seven pipes, including “four in a row” at one point, Gait said. “We always tell the players shoot for the white of the net, see the net before you shoot it, so you’re not aiming for corners or pipes, that sort of thing,” Gait said. “We weren’t able to execute that today. We had plenty of shots. It was just tough.”

Conversely, Hopkins (4-3) made good on only 10 of 29 shots, including 4 of 5 in a key third quarter. Sophomore midfielder Johnathan Peshko’s third goal gave Johns Hopkins a 7-5 lead with 8:38 left in the third, and the Jays took an 8-6 edge into the fourth on senior midfielder Garrett Degnon’s pick-and-roll score off a Jack Keogh feed.

With 5:53 to go, redshirt-junior midfielder Tucker Dordevic, Syracuse’s top offensive threat (three goals), dodged down the alley and pulled the Orange within one, but that was the closest it got.

After a series of empty possessions from both teams, Hopkins junior midfielder Jacob Angelus’ right-handed rip from the left wing, assisted by senior attackman Joey Epstein, gave Hopkins a two-goal advantage with 2:21 to go.

“We haven’t had the most success so far on the offensive end this season, but we’re building an identity that guys are committing to,” Johns Hopkins second-year coach Peter Milliman said. “I don’t have that much of an issue if we get outshot by 25, as long as we’re doing our job as a group.”

They did enough, then Johns Hopkins junior long-stick midfielder Blake Rodgers picked off Dordevic’s final shot as it left his stick with a little more than a minute remaining. To ice the game, Epstein (two goals, three assists) tallied an empty-netter for the Jays’ final three-goal difference.

From there, it was time for the handshake line, and another scene in the story of Petro: The Return. Epstein, a former prized recruit by Pietramala and now a senior, was among several Blue Jays to share an extended embrace with their former coach near midfield.

“Mixed emotions,” Epstein said in a press conference afterward. “A lot of the team was recruited by Coach Petro. But we have to do our job.” Epstein also joked, “I don’t think he looks too good in burnt orange.”

Leading up to the game, the awkward homecoming, something few could have ever envisioned a few years ago, was a topic of conversation in both locker rooms.

Milliman addressed the story early in the week, acknowledging the return of the coach whom he replaced.

“Obviously, he’s an important person in our history, in our success,” Milliman said of his message this week, “but that’s not really relevant to the 2022 version of the Blue Jays and what we can do to find success.”

In Syracuse, Pietramala spoke about the elephant in the room privately with the team — and in game planning.

“I mean, if you look at the roster, probably 40 out of the 50 were his recruits,” Orange redshirt-senior defenseman Brett Kennedy said. “He knows the tendencies, which obviously helps when you’re scouting.”

Beyond that, though, Pietramala tried to downplay any narratives surrounding the meeting of two of college lacrosse’s premier programs. He declined to do media interviews last week in an effort to keep the focus on the players, though they knew what the game meant to him.

“I thought it would be more of distraction,” Gait said, “but everybody was pretty good with it. These kids played their hearts out for him, trying to get him that ‘W’ here. The kids all have his back and know what type of coach he is.”

There was, though, at least one key exception where Pietramala was fine with openly referring back to his long life guiding the New York Yankees of men’s college lacrosse.

For instance, not every visiting coach to Baltimore has a longtime in at one of the better Italian restaurants in town. For years, Pietramala brought Johns Hopkins teams to Sammy’s Trattoria in the city for night-before meals.

Talk about serendipity with new starts: Last year, Sammy’s owner Sam Curreri opened a new location in Baltimore County — not far from where Pietramala still has a home. Upon arrival over the weekend, the Orange’s 54-player roster enjoyed a savory dinner at the restaurant.

“He treated us like he’s always treated us,” Pietramala said, “like family.”