The Maryland and Johns Hopkins lacrosse teams were in search of identities. Hopkins might have found itself, but the Terps are still looking.
No. 14 Hopkins scored five straight goals in the third quarter to turn a close game into a rout as the Blue Jays defeated No. 8 Maryland, 10-4, yesterday before an announced crowd of 8,626 at Homewood Field.
The win ended a five-game losing streak by the Blue Jays (4-5), who are hoping to use the victory as a springboard for confidence and a second straight run for the national championship.
"Winning is a hell of a lot better than losing," Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala said. "It seems like we almost forgot what it felt like. I think today we had the opportunity to show people we're not as bad as everybody thinks."
"This is step one for us tonight," Pietramala said. "In order to walk, you got to crawl. In order to run, you got to walk. We took a step today."
Maryland (7-4) is in no man's land. The Terps have lost two in a row and have scored only eight goals in their past two games.
Usually, a Maryland-Hopkins game is filled with intensity, great hits, comebacks and fights. But yesterday, Hopkins was a unanimous winner because the Terps were punchless on offense and defense.
The Blue Jays owned the crease on their offensive end, jamming in pass after pass for some easy goals. When Maryland had the ball, the Terps had no ball movement, even less motion.
The Terps were without leading scorer and attackman Travis Reed for the second straight game, out for violating team rules. But even Maryland coach Dave Cottle said Reed would have made little difference yesterday.
"I'll just talk about the guys who played," Cottle said. "Travis wouldn't have made a difference unless he's a faceoff guy."
"We're a young team, and some of the young guys were a little starry-eyed," Cottle said. "Where do we go from here? I think we'll watch some film and play around with the attack, and play around with the midfield. We're a transition team and we need to improve on our six-on-six offense. We have to improve some things to get their heads ready for Penn [next week's opponent], and that's where it needs to be."
Pietramala seems to have found his answers. He pulled Michael Kimmel off the first midfield yesterday and replaced him with Mark Bryan to get better ball movement in the first and put more scoring power in the second unit. He ran four attackmen at one time to counter Maryland's zone defense.
