Box Score ANNAPOLIS, MD – Johns Hopkins beat Mercyhurst, 10-9, in the seventh-place game at the Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference (MAWPC) Championship Sunday morning. The Blue Jays finish the season with a 12-23 record and post the most wins in a season since 2017.
Mercyhurst took an early 2-1 lead on the strength of a pair of Owen Hardner goals.
Quint Steffey tied the game at the 3:10-mark with a man-up goal and then
Patrick Rooney scored a five-meter to put Hopkins on top.
Andrew Lee pushed the lead to two with a six-on-five goal with 1:44 to play in the first.
Phillip Long scored 71 seconds into the second and just like that the Blue Jays led 5-2. Ben Gavran and JP Kirouac halted the run with back-to-back goals to bring the Lakers within one at 4:27.
Alec Baker scored on a man-up a little over a minute later to make it a 6-4 game. Gavran then scored to spark a three-goal spurt that saw Mercyhurst go up 8-6 at 4:55 in the third.
Long and
Max Blecher scored in a 49-second span to knot the score at eight. Will Cheney put the Lakers back on top with an extra man goal at 4:08 in the fourth, just but 19 seconds later, Long completed his hat trick and tied the game at nine.
Jason Mihalopoulos then put the Blue Jays on top with a six-on-five goal at 2:12. The defense made it stand and the Jays took the win.
Long led the Blue Jays with a hat trick and five points to go with a steal and a block. He finishes the season with 19 blocks, one shy of the single-season record. Rooney (1g, 1a) and Lee (1g, 1a) tallied two points each, while Lee also drew two ejections and grabbed two steals. Mihalopoulos totaled three drawn ejections to go with a goal and steal.
Kyle Pearson made 20 saves in the cage, one shy of his career high, and tied for the fifth most in a game in JHU history.
Lee and Long finished with 67 and 60 goals respectively. They are the two highest goal-scoring totals in JHU history by freshmen. This is the ninth time in the last 20 seasons that two players had 20 or more goals. This is the first time it was done by two freshmen.
