BALTIMORE — In a surprise to no one, it turns out a connected offense is better than a scattershot one.

Rutgers figured it out Saturday before it left the Scarlet Knights on a losing streak.

After struggling for traction in the first half, No. 7 Rutgers controlled the final 30 minutes to earn a 15-9 victory over No. 15 Johns Hopkins at Homewood Field as both teams reached the midpoint of Big Ten play.

Kieran Mullins had five goals and three assists and Adam Charalambides and Connor Kirst both scored three times for Rutgers (4-1), which sits one game behind Maryland but two ahead of both the Blue Jays (2-3) and Ohio State after the first half of the league’s double-round-robin format.

“A big part of it was getting long possessions and making sure we’re not one-hit wonders on offense,” Mullins said. “First half offensively, we didn’t play very well. We were just best-ball, one guy went, didn’t draw two. Toward the end, we started getting multiple dodges and multiple opportunities, and I think that’s what sparked us a little bit.”

Garrett Degnon had three goals and one assist and Connor DeSimone added two goals and two assists for Hopkins, which had won three in a row against Rutgers since absorbing a two-game sweep in 2016. But a week after monopolizing possession and stymieing Penn State in the second half in their best game to date, the Blue Jays had limited opportunities after building a 7-4 lead late in the first half.

Hopkins had 10 turnovers and shot just 2 of 13 after the break.

“We’re not resilient enough as a group to trust what we’re supposed to be doing,” coach Peter Milliman said. “Right now, we’ve been doing things long enough to know what they are, but when we see some struggle and push comes to shove, we kind of revert back to poor habits and we fall a little bit out of what we’re fundamentally supposed to be doing.”

The Scarlet Knights tightened up in the second half, and Mullins’ back-to-back goals tied it at 7 in the middle of the third quarter. Degnon scored to briefly give Hopkins the lead back, and Rutgers knotted it when faceoff man Jonathan Dugenio found the net off a Charalambides feed on the ensuing faceoff.

It was a hint of how the fourth quarter would unfold. A week after Rutgers hung in gamely at Maryland before being swamped in the final period, the Scarlet Knights flipped things Saturday. Kirst scored off a Dugenio pass six seconds into the fourth quarter, and Charalambides swatted in a loose ball nearly a minute later to make it 10-8.

Evan Zinn’s low-sailing bullet got Hopkins within 10-9, but Mullins scored an unsettled goal off a failed clear and then another off a faceoff win in a span of eight seconds, and the Blue Jays never threatened again.

“They got in transition a lot,” Milliman said. “They’re very good and they do it a lot, and there was a good portion of the game where that was almost all of their production, and we did not do a good enough job of turning it back. We did not do enough defending it. It’s clear we don’t have the ability to prepare our own team because we’re not very good at transition on the offensive end. It’s a clear emphasis for us going forward, and I think we were exposed pretty well today.”

As much as Rutgers’ well-known willingness to run help decided things, the Scarlet Knights’ defense gamely bounced back from giving up eight goals on the first eight Maryland possessions in the fourth quarter a week earlier, a stretch that turned a taut encounter into a 19-12 rout.

Garrett Bullett helped limited Hopkins attackman Joey Epstein to one goal, and Jaryd Jean-Felix improved as the day unfolded and kept DeSimone without a point in the second half. Collectively, the group’s tight slide packages frustrated the Blue Jays offense and helped provide a spark for the rest of the roster.

“We kind of started slow, but it was great to see our D guys set the tone for the offense this week,” Mullins said.

And so Rutgers was left with the preferred sort of lesson — one administered in a victory. There was some reflection over the last week about the stumble at Maryland, an experience Mullins described as “not great” but one “I thought we needed a little bit.”

There was no need for a repeat, especially with Maryland making the trek to Piscataway next week as the second half of Big Ten play begins. Rutgers finds itself in fine shape at the turn, very much in a conference title race in the present, the possibility of the program’s first NCAA tournament berth since 2004 beckoning a month-and-a-half in the future.

It’s distant enough to keep tweaking, keep growing, keep progressing, as Brecht knows all too well. And reinforcing the stark contrast of halves on Saturday, one that as Brecht pointed out utilized “roll-off guys and cutters and one-more guys and guys who are going to feed and blast and fade” — and one that did not — provides a valuable takeaway gleaned without the pain of a loss.

“In the first half, there was one guy trying to do all the work, and everyone else was watching,” Brecht said. “At the end of the day, the offense — whether it’s transition or six-on-six [or] man-up, for that matter — it works better when everyone’s playing cohesively with the plan that’s in place, not just doing their own things individually. [We’re] talented, individually, no doubt about it. But more talented together.”