BALTIMORE, MD – The 897 souls who braved chilly temperatures for Sunday night's Johns Hopkins-Delaware men's lacrosse game at Homewood Field paid for one ticket to enter the stadium.  In retrospect, the Johns Hopkins ticket office should have charged each of them triple the admission price as they were treated to three entirely different games in one.   Officially, the Blue Jays knocked off the Blue Hens, 12-10, to run their winning streak to three games and improve to 7-3 on the year, but that hardly tells the story of the three-act drama that unfolded at Homewood.
 
Act One
Playing their second game in three days and fifth in 15 days, the Blue Jays came out firing and scored the first three goals of the game and five of the first six to build a 5-1 lead just 46 seconds into the second quarter.
 
Before the game was six minutes old, the Blue Jays had goals from Russell Melendez, Cameron Chauvette and Jacob Angelus and then answered a Tye Kurtz goal for the 'Hens with a Ryan Evans goal in transition to lead 4-1 after a quarter and 5-1 just 46 ticks into the second period on a Brendan Grimes goal as he swept the top of the box and got his left hand free.
 
Act Two
After emotion carried the Blue Jays through the first 20 minutes of the game, Delaware (5-3) responded with a stunning eight-goal run that included a lot of Kurtz on the offensive end and sparkling goalkeeping at the other end from Matt Kilkeary.  A Kurtz goal at the 7:55 mark of the second quarter jump-started the spree for the Blue Hens, who needed just over seven minutes to turn the 5-1 deficit into a 6-5 halftime lead; the final four Delaware goals of the first half came in the final 3:55 with JP Ward, Owen Grant, Nick Jessen and Kurtz all scoring in that time. 
 
Grant scored from 60 yards out with the Blue Jays in a 10-man ride to make it 5-4 with 2:20 on the second quarter clock, while Jessen evened things up 59 seconds later when he spun past a defender at the top of the box and picked the corner;  Kurtz went low-to-high just 13.9 seconds before halftime to account for the 6-5 halftime score.
 
After allowing four goals and managing just one save in the first quarter, Kilkeary settled in and posted eight saves while allowing just one goal in the second.
 
The second act carried into second half as Delaware capped off its eight-goal run with goals from Mike Robinson, Jason Kolar and Kurtz in the first 6:08 of the third quarter.  At this point, the Blue Hens held two things – a 9-5 lead and all the momentum.  As it turned out, act two came to an abrupt end after the Kurtz goal at the 8:52 mark.
 
Act Three
It started simple enough.  "It" was a 7-0 run for the Blue Jays that proved to be the basis of the third and final act of the game.  Evans isolated from behind the goal and scored from in tight to the right of Kilkeary just 49 seconds after the Kurtz goal had made it 9-5.  It would be five more minutes before the three-goal deficit was trimmed to two as Garrett Degnon's team-leading 19^th goal of the season off a quick feed from Jacob Angelus with 3:07 remaining in the third quarter made it 9-7.
 
Delaware held the two-goal lead into the fourth quarter, but a nifty two-man game between Brooks English and Johnathan Peshko just 35 seconds in made it 9-8 and a Degnon extra-man goal five minutes later drew the Blue Jays even.  Act three was now well underway.
 
When Matt Collison scored from the wing and Casey McDermott snuck one inside the post on the run just 49 seconds apart midway through the period the Blue Jays were up 11-9 and Collison added an insurance goal three minutes later to make it 12-9 and cap the seven-goal run.  Kurtz added an extra-man goal with 20 seconds remaining to account for the final scoring and bring this three-act drama to an end.
 
Inside the Box Score – Johns Hopkins
• The Blue Jays held decisive advantages in shots (48-26), ground balls (49-23) and faceoffs (19-7).
• Junior Tyler Dunn took all 26 faceoffs for the Blue Jays and had the 19 wins and 11 ground balls to his credit.  The 19 faceoff wins are one shy of his career while, while the 11 ground balls are a personal best.
• Graduate student Alex Mazzone had a career-high 12 ground balls,  The 12 GBs are the most by a Blue Jay non-faceoff specialist since Matt Bocklet had 12 against Loyola in 2008.
• Degnon, Collison and Evans all scored two goals for the Blue Jays, who got goals from nine different players and points from 11 different players in the victory.
• Angelus had a team-high four points on one goal and three assists.  He now has 27 assists in nine games played.
• Degnon extended his goal-scoring streak to 22 games.
 
Inside the Box Score – Delaware
• Kurtz entered the game with a national-best 27 goals and have five goals and two assists on the night.
• All 10 Delaware goals and all six Blue Hen assists came from six members of the starting lineup.
• Kilkeary matched his career high with 19 saves; 15 of the 19 came in the second and third quarters combined when the Hens outscored the Blue Jays 8-3.
 
Up Next
Johns Hopkins will return to action on Saturday, March 25 when the Blue Jays travel to Michigan to open Big Ten play against the Wolverines (7 pm).