BALTIMORE, MD – The 16^th-ranked Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse team got a career-high five points from graduate midfielder Jack Keogh and held visiting Jacksonville to just two goals in the final 24 minutes as the Blue Jays opened the 2022 season with an 11-8 win over the Dolphins at blustery Homewood Field Saturday afternoon.
 
The Blue Jays (1-0) never trailed in the game, but could never quite put the Dolphins away either.  Tied at 5-5 late in the second quarter, Johns Hopkins got two consecutive goals from graduate attackman Connor DeSimone – one with two minutes left in the first half and the other just under 90 seconds into the third quarter – to grab a 7-5 lead.
 
The Dolphins (0-1) would inch back to within one on the third of Jacob Greiner's three goals four minutes after the second DeSimone goal, only to see the Blue Jays strike twice in a 39-second span to grab a 9-6 lead.
 
The first goal of Jake Lilly's career, off an assist from Casey McDermott, and a top-shelf laser from Garrett Degnon, quickly turned the 7-6 lead into the 9-6 advantage for the Blue Jays.
 
The teams would split the last four goals of the game over the final 17 minutes with Max Waldbaum's fourth for Jacksonville making it a 9-7 game with 82 seconds remaining on the third-quarter clock.  That score lasted exactly 81 seconds as Brendan Grimes beat the third-quarter clock off the third of Keogh's three assists on the day to give the Blue Jays a 10-7 lead at the end of three.
 
DeSimone completed his hat trick early in the fourth quarter to give the Blue Jays their largest lead of the game at 11-7 and that score held until Jeremy Winston scored in transition for the Dolphins with still more than eight minutes remaining.  Neither team would score down the stretch as Jacksonville's Luke Millican made five fourth-quarter saves and Josh Kirson came up with two for the Blue Jays to account for the 11-8 final score.
 
The opening 28 minutes solved nothing as the teams battled to the 5-5 tie before the first of DeSimone's three goals gave Hopkins the lead for good.  Waldbaum scored three times for Jacksonville and Keogh had both of his goals and an assist for Johns Hopkins as the teams evenly split the first 10 goals of the game.
 
What It Means
• Johns Hopkins is now 13-2 in its last 15 season openers and 18-4 in its last 22.
• The Blue Jays are now just two wins shy of all-time victory number 1,000.
• JHU improved to 31-16 all-time in the month of February with today's win.
• Today's win is the 70^th for Peter Milliman in his head coaching career.
• Today's game was the earliest in school history.  Previously, JHU had played twice on February 7.
 
Inside the Box Score – Johns Hopkins
• The five points for Keogh topped his previous career high of three at Michigan in 2021.
• DeSimone's first goal was the 50^th of his career and the hat trick is his ninth.
• Degnon's goal extended his point-scoring streak to 20 games.
• Tyler Dunn was 11-of-18 on faceoffs with eight ground balls.  All three of those totals are career highs.
• JHU held advantages in shots (45-32) and ground balls (35-32).
 
Inside the Box Score - Jacksonville
• Waldbaum and Greiner combined for seven of Jacksonville's eight goals.
• The 17 saves are a career high for Millican.
 
Up Next
Johns Hopkins will return to action on Friday, February 11 when the Blue Jays make the short trip to Towson to take on the Tigers (6 pm).