The Game
«  Johns Hopkins (8-6, 3-2 B1G) takes on top-ranked and top-seeded Penn State (13-1, 5-0 B1G) in the Big Ten Championship game.
«  The second-seeded Blue Jays advanced to the Big Ten title game with a 12-7 win over third-seeded Maryland.  Penn State topped Rutgers, 18-6, in the other semifinal. 

The Facts
«  This is the 132nd 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 991-340-15.
«  JHU owns 44 national championships with nine NCAA titles, 29 USILA titles and six ILA crowns to its credit.

Poll Position
«  Johns Hopkins is ranked 15th in this week's USILA Coaches Poll and 16th in the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll.  These are the two official in-season polls conducted throughout the regular season.
«  Penn State is ranked first in both the USILA Coaches Poll and the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll.  Both complete polls can be found on page 13.
«  The game against Penn State will be Johns Hopkins' fifth straight against a team ranked in the top 10 in the nation at the time of the game.
«  This week's game will be Johns Hopkins' 11th of the season against a team ranked in this week's USILA Top 20.

Series History
«  This week's game will be the 12th game in a series that dates to a 14-1 Johns Hopkins win in 1914.
«  JHU leads the all-time series 9-2, although Penn State has won the last two meetings.
«  Penn State scored its first-ever victory against Johns Hopkins last season as the Nittany Lions scored a 14-12 victory in State College.  PSU added a 20-9 home victory against the Blue Jays two weeks ago.

Rematches After Losses
«  The Big Ten Championship game against Penn State will mark the 15th time under head coach Dave Pietramala that the Blue Jays take on an opponent in the post-season (NCAA or Big Ten Tournaments) that beat them during the regular season.
«  In the previous 14 instances where JHU faced a rematch after losing the first game, they have come back to avenge the loss nine times.

BIG Title-Game Rematches
«  For what it's worth, Johns Hopkins is making its third appearance in the Big Ten Championship game.  In the previous two instances, the Blue Jays avenged a regular season loss with a title-game victory (2015/Ohio State, 2018/Maryland).

Getting Offensive in the B1G Tournament
«  This week's game against Penn State will be the eighth Big Ten Tournament game Johns Hopkins has played since the inception of the league in 2015.
«  In the previous seven Big Ten Tournament games, Johns Hopkins has scored 12 or more goals in six of the seven and 13+ in four of the seven.
«  The only time Johns Hopkins failed to score at least 12 goals in a Big Ten Tournament game came in the 2018 semifinals against Ohio State, when the Blue Jays topped the Buckeyes, 6-5, on an Alex Concannon goal with 11.3 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

B1G Tournament - A Little History
«  The Big Ten Men's Lacrosse Tournament is in its fifth year of existence as the league added men's lacrosse in 2015.
«  There has never been a Big Ten Championship game without either Johns Hopkins or Maryland.  In 2018, JHU and Maryland met in the title game (a 13-10 Blue Jay victory).
«  Either Johns Hopkins (2015, 2018) or Maryland (2016, 2017) has won every Big Ten Men's Lacrosse Tournament.
«  The top seed has advanced to the title game every year.  The number-two seed has advanced four times (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019).

Post-Season & HighPoint.com Stadium
«  Johns Hopkins is no stranger to playing post-season games in HighPoint.com Stadium.  In fact, this will be the eighth post-season game the Blue Jays play here.
«  Three of JHU's nine NCAA titles were won in this stadium (1974, 1978, 1987) with the 1987 title being won with a sophomore defenseman named Dave Pietramala leading the way.

For What It's Worth
«  This week's game will be JHU's 15th game of the season. Not including their games against JHU, the Blue Jays' first 14 opponents are a combined 124-60 (.674) through games of May 2.  That ranks as the highest opponent winning percentage in the nation. 

Doing the Little Things
« In the last 12 games, JHU is 195-of-224 (.871) on clears and has won 184-of-323 (.570) faceoffs.  This is a big improvement from the Blue Jays' first two games of the season, when they were 28-of-40 (.700) on clears and 25-of-61 (.417) on faceoffs in losses to Towson and Loyola.

Lending a Hand
«  Through 14 games, 100 of Johns Hopkins' 168 goals have been assisted ... that's 59.5%.  By comparison, JHU collected assists on 62.3% of its goals last season.
«  For the record, the last time Johns Hopkins assisted on better than 65% of its goals for an entire season was in 2003, when the Blue Jays totaled 151 assists on 224 goals (67.4%).

Spreading it Around
«  Johns Hopkins has 19 different goal-scorers and 23 different players have registered at least one point through 14 games.

Class Act
«  Johns Hopkins has scored 168 goals and collected 100 assists for 268 points through 14 games with a strong balance in the scoring breakdown among the four classes.
«  Blue Jay seniors lead the way with 50 goals and 74 points, while the team's juniors lead the way with 28 assists.
«  The balance in scoring has been remarkable as each class has totaled at least 28 goals and 51 points through 14 games.  The freshman, junior and senior classes all have at least 71 points in 14 games.

In Case We Get There
«  Johns Hopkins is 27-16 (.628) in overtime under the direction of head coach Dave Pietramala.  JHU's last overtime game came in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament, when the Blue Jays topped Georgetown, 10-9.
«  Johns Hopkins has won seven of its last 10 overtime games.

One-Goal Wonders
«  Including the 14-13 loss to Ohio State on April 14, Johns Hopkins is 56-27 (.675) in one-goal games under head coach Dave Pietramala.
«  The Blue Jays were 4-1 in one-goal games in 2018 and are 6-2 in their last eight one-goal games.

Ten B1G Things You Should Know
1 - Freshman Joey Epstein needs three points to tie the JHU record for points by a freshman (61).

2 - Junior Cole Williams needs one point for 100 in his career.

3 - Senior Kyle Marr needs three goals to move into the top 10 in school history in career goals.

4 - Senior Danny Jones became Johns Hopkins' career leader in caused turnovers by a short-stick player with his 27th in the 12-7 win over Maryland in the B1G Semifinals.

5 - Seniors Kyle Marr and Robert Kuhn will play in their 62nd career games against Penn State in the B1G title game.  That's just two games shy of the JHU career record of 64.

6 -  The game against Penn State will be the 17th for Johns Hopkins under head coach Dave Pietramala against a team ranked number one in the nation.  The Blue Jays are 9-7 under Pietramala in games against number one.

7 - With a win, Johns Hopkins would improve to 6-0 all-time in the Big Ten Tournament when seeded first (2-0) or second (4-0).  The Blue Jays are 0-2 as the number three seed and have never been seeded fourth.

8 - Joey Epstein's eight hat tricks are one shy of the Johns Hopkins single-season record for a freshman (Terry Riordan had nine as a rookie in 1992).

9 - Patrick Foley and Jack Rapine both need two caused turnovers to reach 40 in their career.  Only four players in school history have 40+ caused turnovers (CTs became an official statistics in 2009).

10 - Johns Hopkins is 8-2 in its last 10 games played in the state of New Jersey and the Blue Jays have currently won three straight in the Garden State (@ Rutgers-2018, @ Princeton-2019, vs. Maryland in B1G Semfinals-2019).

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