Maryland men’s lacrosse had a chance to tie the game with less than a minute left after winning the face-off, but Zach Whittier threw the ball away.
Just like that, the Terps’ hopes for the win vanished.
No. 7 Johns Hopkins (11-4, 4-1 B1G) ran out the clock to upset No. 3 Maryland (8-4, 3-2 B1G), 12-11, ending the Terps’ five-game winning streak in the rivalry.
“I think what will sting is how many times [in the fourth quarter] we brought the ball down in transition and we just came up empty,” coach John Tillman said. “We didn’t even get a shot. We turned the ball over … and our defense just had to play over and over and over again.”
Neither side could separate themselves as the teams traded goals all evening, with neither able to go on more than a two-goal run.
After Kyle Long’s goal gave Maryland a 3-2 lead in the first quarter, both defenses ramped up as the next 12 minutes featured zero scores. The Terps pushed shots high and wide during the drought and turned the ball over four times in the second quarter. Freshman goalkeeper Brian Ruppel bailed Maryland out a few times, making a couple of big saves while the offense struggled.
Johns Hopkins broke the scoreless drought when attackers Russell Melendez and Jacob Angelus connected at the 7:31 mark of the second quarter. Johns Hopkins added another goal seconds later as the Blue Jays remained on offense for the first nine minutes of the second quarter.
“I think we’ve had this turn into a little bit of a pattern,” graduate student long-stick midfielder John Geppert said. “We [had] a couple of good performances, then [have] a let down. At this point it’s win or go home for us … it’s really just about playing discipline lacrosse at this point.”
Johns Hopkins’ defense clamped down, holding the Terps to just one shot midway through the second quarter, causing three turnovers in the process. Maryland did not help itself, turning the ball over two more times.
The Terps’ offense struggled in the second quarter, only taking four shots, weathering the Johns Hopkins offensive onslaught that featured 11 shots. Yet the Terps still found some offense with attacker Braden Erksa scoring twice.
“In the second quarter we just played so little offense, just had quick turnovers, a lot of that they extended pressures at times,” Tillman said.
Johns Hopkins opened the second half with back-to-back goals to briefly take the 6-5 lead. But then Maryland scored twice, 30 seconds apart. Junior defender Nick Redd scored his first career goal, going coast-to-coast before firing a powerful shot that went in before Erksa completed a hat trick.
Erksa saved his best goal for last. The freshman’s fourth goal was a beauty with a side arm shot into the top right corner of the net, tying his career-high in scores.
But four Johns Hopkins goals kept the Blue Jays ahead.
Despite an efficient third quarter — scoring four goals on six shots — the Terps found themselves trailing 10-9 entering the final frame.
Senior attacker Daniel Maltz came up clutch late, scoring three critical goals that helped tie the game back even, and his latter cut Maryland’s deficit to 12-11 with less than a minute left.
But Melendez’s second goal of the night from the right side of the goal with under four minutes left proved to be the game winner, bringing the crab trophy back to Baltimore.
The loss pushed Maryland to the No. 3-seed in the Big Ten Tournament. It will face No. 6-seed Rutgers on Saturday at 8 p.m. at SECU Stadium.
