Conner Delaney has played for conference championships. He has played in front of hostile crowds.
But his welcome-to-college-lacrosse moment occurred when he stood on a faceoff wing as the Johns Hopkins men’s team prepared to open the season against Ohio State on Feb. 20.
“I guess I was just pretty nervous on the opening faceoff with having it be the first game in lacrosse in four years,” he said. “I was kind of like, ‘Oh crap, this is real. I better snap out of it.’”
Delaney’s anxiety was not unfounded. After three seasons as the starting point guard for the Blue Jays basketball program and one of the top players in the NCAA Division III landscape, Delaney returned to lacrosse, a sport he had not seriously played since his senior year in 2017 at The Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.
Time away from lacrosse has not dulled the senior’s skills. The 6-foot, 175-pound senior has emerged as the team’s top long-stick midfielder and ranks second among his teammates in ground balls with 13, is tied for second in caused turnovers with three, and has three points on one goal and two assists.
Delaney’s accelerated development has impressed first-year coach Peter Milliman.
“He’s probably a little bit better than I had anticipated, but I wouldn’t say that it’s surprising,” he said. “If you watch his high school highlight film, he was really good. He scored goals, he was great. He hasn’t played lacrosse in a while, but he’s been playing competitive basketball, and he’s just continuing to get better as an athlete.”
Lacrosse is practically a Delaney family passion. Sister Riley is a junior midfielder at St. Joseph’s, brother Will will be a freshman long-stick midfielder at Hofstra next spring, and sister Molly is a high school sophomore defender beginning to draw interest on the recruiting trail.
Delaney’s prowess in lacrosse earned him attention from a few Division I programs, and he made a verbal commitment to play the sport at Villanova in the summer of 2015, just before his junior year of high school. But shortly after making that decision, Delaney changed his mind and switched to Johns Hopkins for basketball, a sport he has played since he was 5 years old.
“Basketball was my first sport growing up,” he said. “I played both from the time I was 8 years old, but basketball was No. 1. It was the thing that I enjoyed doing the most. I felt like I could have gone Division I for lacrosse, but when it came time to decide where I wanted to go, I kind of got a little nervous that I would miss it.”
Despite increased interest from schools such as Cornell, Princeton and Virginia after a senior year in which he, as the starting long-stick midfielder, led Episcopal in ground balls and was named Phillylacrosse.com’s Player of the Year and a US Lacrosse All American, Delaney remained with the Blue Jays.
In three seasons of basketball, Delaney ranks fifth in the program history in assists (288), 19th in 3-pointers (83) and 20th in free throws (206) and is tied for 14th in steals (101). Last winter, Delaney earned All-American first-team status from the National Association of Basketball Coaches and Player of the Year honors from the Centennial Conference while leading the team to its second conference tournament crown and NCAA tournament appearance in three seasons.
Johns Hopkins’ run in the NCAA postseason was cut short by a 104-96 double overtime loss in the first round to Penn State Harrisburg during which Delaney missed the final 15:36 of the second half and both extra sessions after breaking the fifth metatarsal in his right foot — an injury he had suffered as a sophomore.
When the conference canceled winter sports for the 2020-21 season in December because of the coronavirus pandemic, Delaney — with some help from his mother Courtney, who raised the possibility of playing lacrosse in September — reached out to basketball coach Josh Loeffler and Milliman about joining the lacrosse team.
Loeffler strongly endorsed the plan — and just as swiftly rejected any notion about being concerned about the risk of further injury to his standout player.
“We’ve had other athletes in our program do other sports in the spring, and I never thought, ‘Well, what if one of those guys gets hurt jumping?’” Loeffler said, noting that current guard Ethan Bartlett as a freshman won a Centennial Conference title in the triple jump with an outdoor and freshman school record mark of 14.31 meters in May 2019 and that former forward Daniel Vila as a sophomore won silver at the conference championships in the high jump (1.85 meters) in May 2017. “I don’t think it makes any sense. You can get hurt doing anything. I don’t worry about that. I think that’s so far out of my control that it’s not even worth really thinking about it.”
Delaney joined the lacrosse team in January and was greeted by teammates like graduate student midfielder Cole Williams, senior faceoff specialist Kyle Prouty and redshirt senior defenseman Jack Lyne. Delaney said he needed a few weeks to rediscover his lacrosse skills, but Lyne said the transition was much faster.
“The first week, he came out, and his stick skills were basically as sharp as ours, which was a head-scratcher for us,” Lyne said. “I don’t think anyone could have guessed that he was going to be able to shake the rust off as quickly and contribute the way that he’s doing. He’s doing a great job, and we’re definitely happy to have him.”
Delaney compared the long-stick midfielder position to the point guard role.
“It’s defensive-heavy with a little bit of transition, and I do the same thing in basketball,” he said. “I slide my feet, I keep myself between my man and the goal, play help defense, and when it’s time to play in transition, the stuff that I do as a point guard is seeing the field, making correct decisions, and just trying to help the team out any way that I can.”
Plays in lacrosse are often compared to those in basketball, which fit Delaney’s strengths, according to Loeffler.
“He really understands angles and tactics, and he’s just very quick to learn schemes and what a team is trying to do,” Loeffler said. “I think that would apply to any sport he would ever want to play. And on top of that, he’s a relentless competitor. So I think when you combine all of those things, you just assume that he’s going to have a role with the team because those things are valuable no matter what program you are a part of.”
Delaney said one way he thought he could help his teammates was aiding their adjustment to Milliman in his first year just as he and his basketball teammates adapted to Loeffler in 2017-18, his first season.
“I felt I could help the team in some way whether it was helping our younger guys navigate the challenges of playing for a new head coach because I went through that in my freshman year with Coach Loeffler coming in as our new head coach,” he said. “And I’m a senior. So I know what it’s like to win and lose games at the college level. So I thought I could help out in that way. I was definitely going to work extremely hard to possibly play. So when I started to feel comfortable at the LSM position, I started to think, ‘Hey, maybe I can get some time here and contribute on the field.’”
Delaney is scheduled to graduate in May with a bachelor’s in applied mathematics and statistics and will enroll at the Carey Business School in its one-year Master of Science in Finance program. He intends to join his basketball teammates for the 2021-22 season, saying, “Basketball is definitely still in my future.”
For now though, Delaney said his objective is to pitch in however he can to help his lacrosse teammates return to the NCAA tournament. Would he return to lacrosse next spring?
“I would definitely consider it,” he said. “I’m going to cross that bridge when I get to it. I’m just going to enjoy this season as much as I can and enjoy being with this group of guys and not get too far ahead of myself in that regard.”
NO. 6 RUTGERS@NO. 15 JOHNS HOPKINS
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