A bid by Johns Hopkins women’s lacrosse to defy history went awry — quickly.

Winless against top-three opponents for 14 years, the No. 4 Blue Jays had a prime opportunity to break through against No. 3 and eight-time NCAA champion Northwestern. But six unanswered goals by the Wildcats in the first quarter foretold a humbling 18-5 defeat for Johns Hopkins on Thursday night before an announced 750 at Homewood Field.

After recording the first goal of the game, the Blue Jays were outscored 14-4 for the remainder of the first half. Northwestern set off a running clock by taking its first 10-goal lead with 1:34 left in the second quarter and then again just two minutes into the third quarter, and the running clock continued for the rest of the game.

Junior attacker Ava Angello led Johns Hopkins with two goals, and graduate student attacker Campbell Case and senior attacker Charlotte Smith, a Baltimore native and Bryn Mawr graduate, each notched one goal and one assist. But the Blue Jays (9-3, 3-1 Big Ten) could not extend what had been an eight-game winning streak and suffered their first setback since an 11-7 loss to then-No. 13 Loyola Maryland on Feb. 18.

Johns Hopkins suffered its worst defeat since a 25-8 pasting by Syracuse in an NCAA Tournament second-round game on May 14, 2023, and dropped its 18th consecutive game against a top-three opponent since upsetting the then-No. 2 Wildcats, 12-11, on April 16, 2011. The program fell to 2-25 all-time against top-three competition.

But that mattered little to Blue Jays coach Tim McCormack, who was more concerned with fortifying his players’ psyches after a decisive result.

“I just told the group this: We can’t let this define us,” he said. “It’s a game, and you get it out of your system. You learn from it. Maybe the moment this evening was a little bit too big at this point, and that’s OK. We’ll learn from it, we’ll get back out there. There’s another day to tomorrow to get better and learn and grow. It won’t define us.”

The game opened so encouragingly for Johns Hopkins when senior attacker Ashley Mackin converted a pass from Case to give the team a 1-0 lead with 11:49 left in the first quarter.

But Northwestern ripped off six straight goals in a 4:24 span. Junior attacker Madison Taylor fueled the run with two goals and three assists.

When Case scored off a feed from Smith with 90 seconds left in the opening period, that marked the Blue Jays’ first goal in 10:19. And Angello’s goal off a deft duck-and-weave to the slot sent them into the second quarter trailing by three goals at 6-3.

But the Wildcats outscored Johns Hopkins, 8-2, in the second quarter, including a 5-0 run in a 4:37 stretch that touched off that first running clock. They controlled 15 of 20 draws in the first half, and senior midfielder Sam Smith finished with a game-high 12 draw controls, leading Northwestern to a significant advantage in time of possession.

“That’s a lot of defense against a great offense,” said McCormack, who was an assistant coach for the Wildcats and coach Kelly Amonte Hiller from 2014 to 2019. “These guys are excellent. If you give them those kinds of chances, they’re going to capitalize, [and] they sure did. On D, they pressured the ball, but we’ve seen that. We play against ourselves, and we are that style. So it was not anything we hadn’t seen before. So the possessions were probably the biggest thing.”

Taylor paced the four-time defending Big Ten champion Wildcats (10-2, 4-0) with game highs in goals (four), assists (four) and points (eight). Graduate student attacker Niki Miles chipped in two goals and three assists, and senior defender Sammy White, a Timonium resident and Dulaney graduate, racked up one goal, one assist, three ground balls and three draw controls.

Half of Northwestern’s first six goals occurred in transition, and Taylor said using the team’s speed to prevent the Blue Jays from setting up their zone defense was part of the offensive strategy.

“We’re a really athletic team, and we really wanted to show that today,” she said. “We really wanted to push the fastbreaks, and we did a good job of that. It was fun.”

Taylor called the performance the Wildcats’ most complete showing of the season, and Amonte Hiller agreed.

“I think we’ve come out strong and we kind of fell off. Or we went into a hole and then we picked it up. But this was the most complete,” she said. “Even our two goalies who came in off the bench played phenomenal, and our D that came off the bench and even our offense. So really proud of the group, and this is an important game for us, a Big Ten game. They’re all very important, but obviously, with Tim, we have a ton of respect for them, and they’re a great team.”

The outcome puts Northwestern squarely in the driver’s seat for the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament April 23-27 in College Park. That shouldn’t color how Johns Hopkins views the strides it has made thus far, according to McCormack.

“We know what we’ve done, we know the body of work we have,” he said. “Let’s figure out what put us in this position and work on those things and get better from those things, but don’t ever forget about where we’re at and what we’ve done to date and how we’ve gotten here by building, by keeping it one day at a time, by not looking too far ahead, by not focusing on others, keeping the focus on us. If we can do those things and string those things together and stay together as we have, the ball will be rolling in our direction here shortly.”

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