It started so well for Johns Hopkins women’s lacrosse. Then almost as quickly, the tide turned.
No. 4 Maryland overcame an early 3-0 deficit by scoring 13 of the game’s last 18 goals to pull away for a 13-8 victory over the No. 8 Blue Jays on Wednesday night before an announced 650 at Homewood Field.
Sophomore midfielder Kori Edmondson scored three goals and freshman attacker Lauren LaPointe came off the bench to score the first three goals of her career to power the Terps (11-3, 4-1 Big Ten) to their 26th win in 26 meetings against archrival Johns Hopkins. Similar three-point efforts by senior attacker Chrissy Thomas (two goals and one assist), graduate student attacker Hannah Leubecker (one goal and two assists) and senior attacker Eloise Clevenger (one goal and two assists) helped Maryland improve to 10-0 against the Blue Jays in games in Baltimore.
Scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., the matchup was delayed for 30 minutes because the bus carrying the Maryland team was stuck in a traffic snarl created by an accident that shut down three lanes of Interstate 95 between College Park and Baltimore. But Edmondson did not think that snafu contributed to the Terps’ lethargic start during which Johns Hopkins (10-4, 2-2) sprinted to a 3-0 advantage less than nine minutes into the game.
“I think we were just kind of a little bit slow getting out there,” the Severn native and McDonogh graduate said. “Then we were like, ‘You know what? Let’s focus back on Maryland and what we do.’ We went hard, and we saw the goals drop. Right from then, we never stopped.”
Maryland used a 5-0 run spanning the first and second quarter to dig out of the early hole and rebound from Saturday night’s 17-9 humbling loss to No. 1 and reigning NCAA champion Northwestern at the Field Hockey & Lacrosse Complex in College Park. In that setback, the offense was limited to 26 shots, and coach Cathy Reese said a point of emphasis was taking more attempts. The Terps finished with 44 on Wednesday night.
“We had a lot of looks on goal,” she said. “We didn’t shoot great, but I’ll take it. We wanted to attack. We didn’t attack the last couple games, and I think we’ve been more hesitant. So that’s what we’ve been talking about, and we made that shift and made that change.”
The Terps had more opportunities thanks to the play of its primary draw unit of graduate student midfielder Shaylan Ahearn, senior midfielder Shannon Smith and graduate student defender Meghan Ball. That trio combined to control 19 of 25 draws with Smith securing a career-high 11, Ball four and Ahearn two.
Smith, a Phoenix native and Roland Park graduate, credited Ahearn, a Woodbine native and Glenelg Country graduate, with directing her and Ball to certain spots.
“I feel like our whole draw team trusts each other enough where she does it and we all just clicked,” Smith said. “I think even though we were down by three, it was more just about focusing on taking it play-by-play. So we kind of stepped up, trusted Shay. Shay’s amazing at placing it. So it worked out well.”
With the score tied at 5 at halftime, much of the Terps offense in the third quarter ran through Thomas. She scored a goal off a pass from Clevenger (Marriotts Ridge) just 27 seconds into the period.
Thomas then found LaPointe for her second goal of the game with 12:23 remaining to give Maryland a 7-5 lead. And after Blue Jays sophomore attacker Ava Angello halved the two-goal deficit with 11:31 left, Thomas earned her third point of the quarter by dodging from the right side of the net to the slot and scoring with 2:13 remaining.
In the fourth quarter, Leubecker tallied an extra-player goal with 12:06 left, and LaPointe completed her hat trick with 9:16 remaining. After another goal by Angello with 8:28 left, older sister Eloise Clevenger fed younger sister and freshman Maisy for a goal with 5:43 remaining.
Edmondson completed her hat trick with 3:26 left. And after Angello connected on a pass by senior midfielder Marielle McAteer (St. Mary’s) with 2:49 remaining, Eloise Clevenger’s goal with an assist from LaPointe capped the scoring.
Entering the game, LaPointe had scored zero goals, taken one shot, and had one assist. By the end of the game, she had career bests in both goals and shots (four), and Reese said the freshman had earned her way onto the field.
“I just think she’s done really well in practice against the zone, finding her gaps and her areas of where to cut,” Reese said. “She does a really good job, and tonight, she caught and finished them. So it was great. Really proud of her. It’s hard to get thrown into a game as a freshman against a top-10 opponent like Hopkins, and she handled the pressure and she executed, which was exactly what we needed at that time.”
Angello accounted for game highs in both goals (five) and points (six), and graduate student goalkeeper Madison Doucette made 19 saves, tying the Johns Hopkins’ Division I single-game record set by Sara Love in a 9-8 overtime win at Towson in 1998.
But the Terps’ ability to largely silence a Blue Jays draw unit that entered the game ranked second in the Big Ten at draw controls per game (15.9) and graduate student midfielder Jennifer Barry who led the conference in draws per game (7.1) emerged as the turning point to coach Tim McCormack.
“They won a lot of draws. So they had the ball a ton, and we had to play a lot of defense,” he said. “They had second chances, and we didn’t get the ground balls on a couple of those. We had some decent shots in the mix there, but not ones that we’re used to seeing. But they played well. The draw was probably the biggest difference maker.”
No. 24 Penn State at No. 4 Maryland
Saturday, noon
Stream: BTN+
No. 6 Michigan at No. 8 Johns Hopkins
Sunday, noon
TV: ESPNU
