Box Score

ANNAPOLIS, MD - The Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse team picked up its final win of the 2015 season when the Blue Jays topped Syracuse by a goal in the NCAA Quarterfinals at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. Fast forward just over eight months and the 2016 team notched its first win in equally thrilling fashion on Tuesday night as the Blue Jays topped Navy, 12-11, in double overtime in the same stadium.

The one-goal win marked the 11th Johns Hopkins-Navy game in the last 23 in the series to be decided by one goal and is the first double overtime game between the two teams since Conor Ford beat the Mids with a goal in a 2004 classic that featured top-ranked Hopkins and second-ranked Navy.

Despite leading for nearly 57 minutes in regulation, the Blue Jays were forced into overtime when Navy got back-to-back goals from Jack Ray and Casey Rees - both off assists from Kevin Wendel - in the final 3:28 to send the game into extra time.

Twice the Blue Jays had golden opportunities to win in the first overtime, but Navy goalie John Connors stopped Holden Cattoni with the Blue Jays up a man and then made a point-blank save on Shack Stanwick a short time later. His counterpart, Hopkins' Brock Turnbaugh, made a crucial save of his own in the first overtime period, which ended with Navy's Matt Rees drawing an unnecessary roughness penalty with just one second remaining.

Working out of the break between extra periods, the Blue Jays worked the ball on the perimeter looking for the right shot, which finally came when junior John Crawley found Shack Stanwick cutting from behind to Connors' right and Stanwick went short side with the game-winner 39 seconds into the second overtime.

After the teams combined for 13 goals through 45 minutes, the offenses took over in the fourth quarter as they totaled nine goals on 21 combined shots in the final 15 minutes of regulation.

With the game tied at 7-7, Hopkins grabbed leads of 8-7 and 9-8 only to have the Midshipmen pull even both times. When Holden Cattoni scored at the 6:55 mark and Ryan Brown followed with his sixth goal of the game 36 seconds later, the Blue Jays had an 11-9 lead that would hold for just under three minutes.

Ray's goal, his third of the game, pulled Navy within 11-10, but Hopkins held the one-goal lead as the clock ticked under a minute. Connors then posted his only save of the fourth quarter when he stopped Brown in tight and Navy went the other way and eventually Wendel found Casey Rees for the game-tying goal with 27 seconds remaining.

From there, both teams had chances to win in the first extra period, but Connors and Turnbaugh were up to the challenge. The Matt Rees penalty as the first overtime period ended then set the Blue Jays up with the extra-man opportunity that Stanwick cashed in on to give Hopkins its ninth straight season-opening victory.

The Blue Jays had grabbed an early 3-0 lead as junior Crawley struck twice in first six minutes - once off a dodge from behind the goal and again three minutes later on sweep across the top - and senior Craig Madarasz followed his second strike with a goal right off a faceoff.

Navy sliced the three-goal deficit to one with consecutive goals in a 20-second span late in the first quarter. After the Blue Jays turned the ball over on an extra-man chance, the Midshipmen got on the board with an extra-man strike of their own as Wendel blew one home off a skip pass from Patrick Keena. Keena then found the net just 14 seconds later as Matt Rees came up with the loose ball off the faceoff following Wendel's goal and found Keena alone 10 yards from the goal.

Johns Hopkins had its three-goal lead back less than four minutes into the second quarter courtesy of back-to-goals by Brown. Stanwick found him alone on the wing off a quick restart with 3:34 left in the first quarter and Brown split from right to left and got his hands free from 12 yards out at the 11:03 mark of the second to make it 5-2.

Navy had it back to a one-goal game by the four-minute mark of the second quarter as Matt Rees scooped up a loose ball and went coast-to-coast to make it 5-3 and Wendel capped a long possession with low right-handed shot that found net at the 4:24 mark.

Hopkins had a two-goal lead at the half as freshman Drew Supinski dodged down the left wing and fired home the first goal of his career and the lead was back to three again midway through the third quarter when Brown completed his 19th career hat trick with extra-man goal off a feed from behind from Stanwick.

Like it had earlier, Navy fought back as Greyson Torain and Ray scored back-to-back goals in a span of 2:30 to make it 7-6. Torain capped a long possession with his goal, while Ray's tally came not long after Hopkins had killed off a man-down situation.

Navy finally drew even just over two minutes into the fourth quarter on a beautiful individual goal by Torain, who slipped through two defenders into the slot and fired home a low shot to the far post to knot the game at seven. That opened the scoring in the wild final quarter, which wasn't enough to determine a winner.

Brown's six goals push his career total to 124 and run his national-best goal-scoring streak to 35 games. This is the longest streak by a Johns Hopkins player since Terry Riordan's 56-game run from 1992-95. Stanwick (1g, 3a), Crawley (2g, 1a) and Supinski (1g, 1a) were the other multi-point scorers for Hopkins, which got 13 saves from Turnbaugh in his first career start and a 14-of-24 performance from Madarasz on faceoffs.

Ray paced Navy with three goals, while Wendel (2g, 2a), Keena (2g, 1a) and Torain (2g) also scored twice for the Midshipmen.

Johns Hopkins will return to action on Saturday, February 13 when the Blue Jays travel to UMBC. Faceoff against the Retrievers is set for 1 pm.

- 30 -