Game Notes Courtesy of Johns Hopkins 2/15/24
Blue Jays, Greyhounds to Meet at Homewood Field on ESPN+
The Game
• Johns Hopkins (2-1) welcomes Charles Street rival Loyola Maryland (1-1) to Homewood Field for the 60th all-time meeting between the two teams. The game will air live online on ESPN+.
When Last We Saw Them
• Johns Hopkins picked up its second consecutive victory as the Blue Jays topped Georgetown, 11-9, last Saturday.
• Loyola went on the road last weekend and fell to Maryland, 11-4, in College Park. The Facts
• This is the 137th season of Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse. JHU first fielded a team in 1883.
• Johns Hopkins enters this week’s game with an all-time record of 1,018-371-15 (.730).
• Johns Hopkins is the only men’s lacrosse program in the nation with 1,000 or more all-time victories. The Blue Jays picked up the program’s 1,000th victory with an 11-10 win over Loyola on February 19, 2022.
• JHU owns 44 national championships with nine NCAA titles, 29 USILA titles and six ILA crowns to its credit.
Game #150 for Milliman
• Last week’s game against Towson was the 150th as a college head coach for Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse coach Peter Milliman. Including the win over the Tigers and subsequent win at Georgetown, he is now 90-61 (.596) in his collegiate coaching career.
Game #50 at Hopkins for Milliman
• Last week’s game at Georgetown was the 50th for Peter Milliman as the head coach at Johns Hopkins.
Poll Position
• Johns Hopkins jumped back into the top 10 in the nation in both major national polls as the Blue Jays are ranked 10th in the USILA Coaches Poll and ninth in the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll.
• Loyola checks in at number 17 in the USILA Coaches Poll and is 20th in the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll.
Poll Notes of Interest
• Including this week’s poll, the USILA has issued 533 polls since the debut poll in 1973. Johns Hopkins has appeared in the top 20 in 513 of those 533 polls and has been ranked in the top 10 in 435 of the 533.
• The Johns Hopkins Athletic Communications office uses the USILA Poll to reflect JHU’s official national ranking at the time of a game. The poll dates to 1973 and is the longest-running, continues men’s lacrosse poll in the nation.
Series History
• Johns Hopkins and Loyola will be meeting for the 60th time this week. The series dates to a 20-1 Johns Hopkins victory in 1939.
• A complete look at the series history can be found on page 15.
Against the Patriot League
• This week’s game against Loyola will be the 258th all-time for Johns Hopkins against a team currently in the Patriot League.
• Johns Hopkins is 194-62-1 (.757) all-time against current Patriot League members.
• 220 of the 257 games the Blue Jays have played against Patriot League members have come against Army (69), Loyola (59) and Navy (92).
Road Openers
• Last week’s game against Georgetown was the first road game of the 2024 season for the Blue Jays.
• Including the 11-9 win against the Hoyas, Johns Hopkins is 4-0 in its road opener under head coach Peter Milliman. The Blue Jays topped Michigan in 2021 (14-7), Towson in 2022 (18-12) and Jacksonville (12-7) in its road opener in Milliman’s first three seasons before adding the win at Georgetown last week.
In February
• This week’s game against Loyola will be the 60th all-time for Johns Hopkins in the month of February.
• JHU is 38-21 (.644) all-time in games played in the month of February.
• Johns Hopkins played its first game in the month of February in 1998, didn’t play again in February until 2004 and has now played at least one game in the opening month of the season every year since 2006.
On This Date
• This week’s game will be just the third all-time for Johns Hopkins on February 17. The Blue Jays are 1-1 all-time in games played on February 17 as they topped Towson, 15-8, in 2014 and fell at Loyola, 12-5, in 2018.
Showing Our Depth
• The Blue Jay depth has been on display in the early season as 24 different players have appeared in all three games and 29 have appeared in two of the three.
• In the two games that Johns Hopkins has played that were decided by two goals or less, 27 players have appeared for the Blue Jays (Denver, Georgetown).
• Of note, in last week’s game against Georgetown, the Blue Jays used four long stick middies (Patrick Deans, Quintan Kilrain, Nick Kaufman, Luke Martin) and five short stick defensive middies (Brett Martin, Hunter Jaronski, Jakson Raposo, Brandon Aviles, Marcelo Arteaga).
Attack Oriented
• Johns Hopkins has started the same three attackmen – Jacob Angelus, Garrett Degnon & Russell Melendez – in each of the first three games of the season.
• Through three games, the trio has combined for 19 goals and 13 assists for 32 points. Translated, they are averaging 6.33 goals and 4.33 assists for 10.67 points per game, which is an increase in their production from 2023.
• Last season, the trio also started together on attack and combined for 95 goals and 65 assists in 17 games (each player missed one game). Translated, they averaged 5.59 goals and 3.28 assists for 9.41 points per game in 2023.
Offensive Notes of Interest
• Since the start of the 2022 season, the Blue Jays are 19-4 when they score 12 or more goals.
• In 84 full quarters since the start of the 2023 season (does not include overtime periods), the Blue Jays have scored two or more goals in 66 quarters and four or more in 37 quarters.
• Johns Hopkins is averaging 12.0 goals per game this season with at least 11 goals scored in each outing thus far. This is the first time since 2017 that JHU has scored 11+ goals in each of the first three games of a season.
• In three games, the Blue Jays have gotten goals from 11 different players and 12 different players have at least one point.
• Johns Hopkins averaged 12.56 goals per game in 2023. That output was the highest scoring average for the Blue Jays since 2015, when Hopkins averaged 13.0 goals per game. The 12.56 goals per game are also the second-best mark at JHU since 2004.
• As a team, Johns Hopkins shot 32.9% in 2023, a mark that ranked 14th in the nation. The 32.9% shooting percentage was the highest for JHU since 2015 (.331).
33 Straight For Degnon
• Graduate student attackman Garrett Degnon will carry a 33-game goal-scoring streak into this week’s game at Loyola after he scored four goals in the win last week at Georgetown. The streak is currently the longest active streak in the nation.
• During his 33-game goal-scoring run, Degnon has scored 84 goals and has 26 multi-goal games and 20 games with 3+ goals to his credit.
• Degnon’s 33-game run is also the longest by a Johns Hopkins player since a JHU-record-tying 37-game run by Ryan Brown from 2013-16. Brown and Terry Riordan (1992-95) co-hold the JHU record for most consecutive games having scored a goal.
Defensive Notes of Interest
• In the season opener against Denver, the Blue Jays held the Pioneers scoreless for a stretch of 18:33 and have held their first three opponents scoreless for a period of 10 minutes or longer a total of seven times.
• Dating back to the start of the 2023 season, the Blue Jays have held their 21 opponents scoreless for a period of at least 10 minutes 31 different times – 22 of those have come in the last 13 games.
• The five goals the Blue Jays allowed against Towson were the fewest JHU has surrendered since Hopkins topped Ohio State, 6-5, in the 2018 Big Ten Semifinals.
• The 14 combined goals allowed in the last two games are the fewest JHU has allowed in a two-game stretch since early in the 2019 season, when the Blue Jays held Mount St. Mary’s (4) and Delaware (10) to a combined 14 in back-to-back games.
• Including the 11-9 win at Georgetown, Johns Hopkins is 18-0 under head coach Peter Milliman and defensive coordinator Jamison Koesterer when holding the opposition to 10 goals or less.