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No. 5 Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse collapses late, loses to No. 13 Denver in OT, 13-12

edward lee, baltimore sun
·5 min read

A season brimming with national championship aspirations for Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse began with a thud.

JJ Sillstrop’s goal midway through overtime — his fourth in a row and sixth of the game — capped a 6-1 rally that propelled No. 13 Denver to a 13-12 victory over the No. 5 Blue Jays on Saturday afternoon before an announced 1,771 at Homewood Field.

Johns Hopkins (0-1), which owned an 11-7 advantage midway through the third quarter and a 12-9 lead with less than five minutes left in regulation, lost for the third time in its past six season openers. The team’s last opener against a ranked opponent also ended with a setback as then-No. 10 Ohio State cruised to a 14-8 win Feb. 20, 2021.

Coach Peter Milliman didn’t mince words about what he shared with his players after the game.

“I think the most important thing right now — and I told this to the guys even before we broke the huddle right there — is to take ownership of it,” he said. “We all make mistakes, and nobody’s perfect, and I think we all have high expectations and want to do things, but you’ve got to earn it. Nobody’s going to give you anything. We’ve got to look each other in the eye and accept where we are and what we just did, and we’ve got to get better from it, and I have no doubt we will.

“I think this is a great group, but we’re as good as we just played two minutes ago.”

Graduate student attackman Jacob Angelus, who paced the Blue Jays with six points on three goals and three assists, expressed confidence in his teammates.

“It’s not great, but it’s a long season, and we’ve learned that over the years,” he said. “Last year, we had a couple of tough losses early in the year, and we ended up having a decent season. So I think it’s great to learn from, and I think we’ll be all right.”

When Angelus completed his hat trick with 7:14 left in the third quarter to give Johns Hopkins an 11-7 lead, the team seemed well on its way to a win. Even after the Pioneers opened the fourth quarter with a pair of goals, senior midfielder Johnathan Peshko’s second goal of the game with 4:06 remaining gave the Blue Jays a three-goal cushion at 12-9.

That’s when Sillstrop went to work. He scored unassisted 37 seconds after Peshko’s tally and then drew Denver within one when he converted a pass from freshman midfielder Lucas Klokiw with 44.4 seconds remaining.

Senior short-stick defensive midfielder Brett Martin collected a ground ball off the ensuing faceoff for Johns Hopkins, but graduate student defenseman Beaudan Szuluk turned the ball over. And when Blue Jays senior defenseman Scott Smith was flagged for a two-minute, nonreleasable illegal body check penalty with 2.9 seconds left, Sillstrop collected a pass from senior midfielder Stephen Avery and skipped the ball past graduate student goalkeeper Chayse Ierlan as time expired.

Asked to describe his game-tying goal, Sillstrop said, “Just put it on net and hope he didn’t see it.”

Milliman was critical of the defense’s work. “We’ve got to get on shooters and give them a much more difficult shot at two seconds left,” he said. “That’s something we’ve got to go over.”

Because of Smith’s penalty, Johns Hopkins couldn’t do much with one fewer player on the field even after winning the faceoff, eventually turning it over on a shot-clock violation. After the Pioneers used a timeout with 2:27 remaining, Sillstrop turned a feed from sophomore attackman Cody Malawsky into a rising shot from a sharp angle right of the net that landed under the crossbar.

Sillstrop again cracked at how fortunate he was, saying he didn’t see his goal. “I closed my eyes,” he said with a smile.

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Malawsky contributed two goals and one assist, and graduate student faceoff specialist Alec Stathakis won 14 of 26 faceoffs with four ground balls as Denver prevailed despite unspecified injuries to senior attackman Michael Lampert (19 goals, 18 assists in 2023) — who left with 1:22 left in the first quarter — and graduate student attackman Richie Connell (16 G, 18 A) and junior midfielder Mic Kelly (14 G, 13 A) — both of whom did not play at all.

“As I said to them in the huddle, I’m proud of them,” said coach Matt Brown, who got a win in his debut after succeeding Hall of Famer Bill Tierney, who retired after last season. “We were relentless to the end, but I wouldn’t expect anything less out of this group. They had been battling all throughout the preseason and all throughout the fall, and they got a nice reward here today.”

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays wasted a three-goal performance from midfielder Hunter Chauvette. He became the first freshman to register a hat trick in his debut since Shack Stanwick had three goals and two assists in a 16-4 rout of UMBC on Feb. 7, 2015.

An offense that converted half of its 18 attempts in the first half floundered in the second half, scoring three on 16 shots. The unit was outshot, 17-2, in the fourth quarter by the Pioneers.

“We just played not to lose rather than to win, and it just caught up to us,” Angelus said of the offensive futility in the second half. “First game of the year, I think we just got a little tired at the end there, and that just can’t happen. We’ve got a lot to learn from, but we’ll be all right.”

Towson at No. 5 Johns Hopkins

Tuesday, 4 p.m.

TV: ESPNU