COLUMBUS, OH – The 14^th-ranked Ohio State men's lacrosse team jumped out to a five-goal first-half lead and then held off a spirited rally by Johns Hopkins as the Buckeyes knocked off the Blue Jays, 14-12, at Ohio Stadium Saturday afternoon.  The win improves Ohio State's record to 4-4 overall and in the Big Ten, while Johns Hopkins falls to 2-6 overall and in the league.
 
After Hopkins had rallied from three different five-goal deficits to tie the game at 10-10 on a Tyler Dunn goal with 5:42 to play in the third quarter, the Buckeyes scored three straight to go up 13-10.  Jack Myers opened the spree when he struck two minutes after Dunn had scored and Jackson Reid and Tre Leclair added goals in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter to make it 13-10.
 
Cole Williams sandwiched his second and third goals of the game around a Johnny Wiseman goal for Ohio State to make it 14-12 with 3:30 remaining.  Johns Hopkins had a goal disallowed after the first of Williams' two goals that would have made it 13-12 and a Joey Epstein offering with just over two minutes remaining was turned aside and the Buckeyes were able to run out the clock for the win.
                                                                                                                                                                                                            
A high-scoring first half ended with the Buckeyes up 10-7.  The Blue Jays led 3-2 early on as freshman Brendan Grimes scored twice and Conner Delaney once in the first 10 minutes to stake Johns Hopkins to the early lead.
 
Ohio State, which had answered game-opening goals from Delaney and Grimes with strikes by Scott White and Myers, responded to Grimes' second goal with a 6-0 run that extended from late in the first quarter through early in the second.
 
Senior Ryan Terefenko scored all three of his first-half goals during the spree, including one on extra-man, to fuel the run for the Buckeyes.  Terefenko's three goals came in succession in a two-minute span late in the first quarter and Myers and Reid scored in a 42-second span early in the second period to make it 8-3.
 
The teams traded the next four goals to account for a 10-5 Buckeye lead late second quarter, but a Garrett Degnon laser with 3:07 left before halftime and the third of Grimes' three first-half goals just six seconds before intermission accounted for the 10-7 halftime score.
 
It took just 75 seconds for the Blue Jays to open the third-quarter scoring as Williams scored from in-tight off a quick feed from Connor DeSimone and freshmen Johnathan Peshko and Dunn scored back-to-back goals in an eight-second span eight minutes later to tie the game at 10-10.
 
That tie last one second short of two minutes before Myers ignited the three-goal run that gave Ohio State a lead it would never relinquish.
The hat trick is the first for Grimes, whose three-goal effort was matched by Williams, who also added two assists on the day.  Degnon scored twice and DeSimone had three assists for the Blue Jays, who won 16-of-30 faceoffs and held a slight advantage in ground balls (31-30).
 
Reid (4g, 2a) and Myers (3g, 2a) and Terefenko (3g) account for 10 of Ohio State's 14 goals in the victory.
 
Johns Hopkins will return to action on Saturday, April 17 when the Blue Jays travel to Rutgers.  Faceoff is set for 5 pm and the game will air on btnplus.com.
 
Notes:  Williams' two assists give him 50 in his career, while his five-point day leaves him just eight points shy of 150 for his career (92g, 50a).  Blue Jay freshmen accounted for five goals on the day.  Dunn won 4-of-7 faceoffs to go along with his first career goal.