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Even on an off day, the Maryland men's lacrosse team persevered.
Despite losing 17-of-22 faceoffs and picking up 10 fewer ground balls than No. 8 Johns Hopkins, the No. 3 Terps proved their resiliency in outlasting their Big Ten rivals, 11-8, before an announced 5,688 at Homewood Field in Baltimore on Saturday afternoon.
Maryland relied on the formula of a stout defense and a lengthy run of goals to improve to 12-2 overall and 5-0 in the conference, and extend its winning streak to 11. The program collected its first regular-season championship since 2014, when it was a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The top-seeded Terps will meet No. 19 Penn State at Homewood Field in Thursday's Big Ten tournament semifinal. The Nittany Lions (8-6, 2-3) secured the No. 4 seed by defeating Michigan, 14-9, earlier in the day.
Although the Blue Jays (8-5, 3-2) lost for the first time in four contests, they will tangle with No. 16 Rutgers.
Maryland collected just 20 ground balls to the Blue Jays' 30, and the team sorely missed freshman faceoff specialist Austin Henningsen, who sat out his fourth consecutive game because of a leg injury.
Freshman Will Bonaparte (5-of-18), freshman Curtis Corley (0-of-3) and senior Andrew Walsh (0-of-1) combined to win just 5-of-22 draws against Johns Hopkins senior Craig Madarasz, who tied a career high in faceoff wins.
"It certainly was not a work of art," coach John Tillman said. "Looking at the stats, we got beat up pretty badly in most of the stats. But I thought our guys just battled and hung in there and overcame some adversity."
The Terps, however, could rely on their traditional area of strength — their defense. Sophomore defenseman Tim Muller shut out sophomore attackman Shack Stanwick (Boys' Latin), the Blue Jays' assists and points leader, in the first half.
Although redshirt senior goalkeeper Kyle Bernlohr finished with only seven saves, he made three in the fourth quarter, including a stop on senior midfielder Holden Cattoni in the slot and a stick save on senior attackman Ryan Brown (Calvert Hall).
"I thought [associate head] coach [Kevin] Conry got us going to pick up the tempo a little bit going into halftime," Bernlohr said. "We came out in the second half with much more tempo. We were moving a lot better, and I think we started to dictate what we wanted to do rather than let them dictate us."
Johns Hopkins opened the scoring when sophomore midfielder Patrick Fraser converted a pass from Cattoni for a man-up goal with 11 minutes, 36 seconds left in the first quarter. But that would prove to be the last time Johns Hopkins would post a lead as Maryland either had the advantage or the score was tied.
The Terps enjoyed two-goal leads at 4-2 with 13:43 left in the second quarter, 5-3 with 9:44 remaining and 6-4 with 12:46 left in the third frame.
A pair of Brown goals assisted by Stanwick in a three-minute span of the third quarter drew the Blue Jays to a 6-6 tie, but Maryland answered back with five consecutive goals over a 12:25 stretch. Senior midfielder Bryan Cole, junior attackman Matt Rambo and sophomore midfielder Connor Kelly each registered one goal and one assist during the spurt.
The Terps defense also dug in. After Brown's goal with 8:54 left in the third period, Johns Hopkins didn't score again until Brown fed Cattoni with 1:37 remaining in regulation, ending a 22:17 drought.
"The game's kind of a roller coaster," said Cole, who finished with one goal and three assists. "The defense did a great job just kind of getting stops for us. Kyle was making saves, getting it out and up for us and kind of took the pressure off of us a little bit to play a little faster."
Brown paced the Blue Jays with three goals and two assists, tying Brian Piccola for second on the program's goals list with 154 and tying Franz Wittelsberger with his 26th career hat trick. But coach Dave Pietramala said the team made too many errors to pull out the victory.
"We harped all week on playing sharp, being clean and that we had to really limit our mistakes because they are a team with the way they play," he said. "They pounce on your mistakes. ... They just take advantage of your mistakes. It's a very good team."
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