BALTIMORE, MD – The Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse team held visiting Towson scoreless for the final 21:26 and outscored the Tigers 7-1 in the second half to fuel a 13-5 victory at Homewood Field Tuesday afternoon.  The Blue Jays grab their first win of the season and improve to 1-1 on the year, while the Tigers drop their season opener to slip to 0-1.  The game was the 50^th in series history.
 
After Towson's Chop Gallagher got his hands free and pulled the Tigers to within 7-5 at the 6:26 mark of the third quarter, the Blue Jay defense buckled down, junior Logan Callahan got hot at the X and the Blue Jay offense scored six times to account for the 13-5 final score.
 
It took just 26 seconds for the Blue Jays to answer Gallagher's goal as Callahan won the ensuing faceoff and junior Russell Melendez found Jacob Angelus alone on the doorstep to give the Blue Jays an 8-5 lead.  Just 21 seconds later, it was Melendez finishing off a transition goal off the faceoff as Callahan fed Patrick Deans and Deans found Melendez, who fired home his second of the game to give the Blue Jays their first four-goal lead (9-5) with 5:39 on the third-quarter clock.
 
Sharp-shooting freshman Hunter Chauvette then went back-to-back as he bridged the third and fourth quarters with goals just over five minutes apart.  He went low-to-high on a nice skip pass from Angelus to close the third-quarter scoring and then blew one home from the top off a feed from Garrett Degnon to push the lead to 11-5 early in the final period.
 
Degnon and Chauvette closed the scoring with extra-man goals to give Hopkins a 13-5 lead.  Junior Jack Webb preserved the eight-goal victory with three saves in the final 4:32 after he came on in relief of starting goalie Chayse Ierlan.
 
A back-and-forth first half saw the teams split the first four goals of the game in the first seven minutes before Johns Hopkins pushed out to a 6-3 lead midway through the second quarter by scoring four of the next five.
 
The Tigers were even at 2-2 after Mikey Weisshaar got to the middle of the field and beat Ierlan from eight yards out at the 8:48 mark of the first quarter, but Melendez and Angelus closed the first-quarter scoring with back-to-back strikes for the Blue Jays and Degnon and Casey McDermott answered Weisshaar's second of the game in the first 7:19 of the second period to give the Blue Jays the three-goal lead.
 
Towson's leading returning scoring, Nick DeMaio, got one back for the Tigers with 93 seconds left in the first half to make it a two-goal game at the break and that score held until Scott Smith opened the second half scoring just over five minutes into the third quarter.  After seeing the Blue Jays clear, the Tigers locked off on all short-stick options for Smith to outlet and he worked his way in transition to the middle of the field and fired home his first goal of the season to give the Blue Jays a 7-4 lead.
 
Gallagher's goal came 3:27 after Smith's to trim the deficit to 7-5, but the Angelus and Melendez goals just 21 seconds apart ignited what became the six-goal, game-ending run.
 
Inside the Box Score – Johns Hopkins
• Degnon, Angelus and Chauvette all recorded hat tricks for the Blue Jays with Degnon and Angelus adding assists as well.  Melendez also added a four-point game (2g, 2a).
• Callahan was 13-of-21 on faceoffs with 10 ground balls.
• Ierlan posted seven saves and allowed five goals in 55:28 with Webb posting the three saves in the final 4:32.
• Johns Hopkins won the ground ball battle 40-18 and the Blue Jays collected 10 caused turnovers on Towson's 18 turnovers in the game.
 
Inside the Box Score – Towson
• Weisshaar had four of the eight points the Tigers accumulated in the game as he had two goals and two assists.
• Luke Downs posted 10 saves in goal for the Tigers, including seven in the second and third quarters combined.
• Towson, one of the top clearing teams in the nation last season, was 20-of-22 on clears, including 11-of-11 in the second half.
 
Notes of Interest
• The game was the 150^th for Peter Milliman as a head coach at the collegiate level.
• JHU is now 17-0 under the direction of Milliman and defensive coordinator Jamison Koesterer when allowing less than 10 goals.
• The five goals allowed are the fewest by Johns Hopkins since the Blue Jays topped Ohio State, 6-5, in 2018 Big Ten Semifinals.
 
Up Next
Johns Hopkins will hit the road for the first time this season on Saturday, February 10 as the Blue Jays travel to Georgetown to take on the Hoyas (12 pm).