Maryland drops first installment of The Rivalry to Hopkins, 15-12

By Christopher Cox

The Maryland Terrapins could not contain Ryan Brown and his Johns Hopkins team on a rainy Saturday night at Byrd Stadium in College Park as the Blue Jays scored six goals in the fourth period to win the first matchup the historic rivals faced each other as Big Ten opponents.

Brown became the fourth player in Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse history to score 50 goals in a season after he scored a whopping eight goals, including four in the fourth period, increasing his goals scored total to 51 by the final whistle. He ranks first in the NCAA in goals per game with 3.92 and third in total goals scored.

Terps fall to Johns Hopkins 15-12. (Courtesy of UMTerps.com)

Maryland, who had won 11 games in a row and boasted a 5.8 goals against average, gave up eight goals in the second half to a Hopkins team that averaged 12.2 goals per game. Hunter Moreland was the catalyst for those goals as he won seven of the eight face offs in the final period.

Hopkins took their first lead of the game roughly 40 seconds into the fourth period after Brown scored two goals from the same spot on the field ten seconds apart, giving the unranked Blue Jays an 11-10 advantage and silencing a majority of the more than 9,000 fans rooting for the No. 2 Terrapins.

Matt Rambo scored the first two goals of the game bumping his total on the season up to 30 and giving the Terps a promising start in the 105th meeting between the powerhouse lacrosse institutions, but was unable to put the ball in the net after the first four minutes of the first period. Joe LoCascio and Jay Carlson led the Terps with three goals each and Bryan Cole added four assists to notch a career-high with 16 on the season.

Several notable streaks were broken with the Terps’ loss. Maryland had won 32 straight games when they scored 10 or more goals and 12 straight against unranked teams. This was the first time one of the teams was not ranked in the contest, dating back to when the polls began in 1973. The Blue Jays also snapped Maryland’s 14-game home winning streak.

Maryland was looking to claim the Big Ten regular season title outright, but with the loss, they ended up sharing the award with Johns Hopkins. The Blue Jays earned the top seed in the Big Ten Tournament by way of head-to-head tiebreaker; Maryland will play Ohio State in the first round on Thursday, April 30.