Johns Hopkins ready to take on NCAA women’s lacrosse tournament challenge

BALTIMORE – Three Maryland men’s lacrosse teams and three women’s teams are preparing for their NCAA Tournament matchups this week.

Women start Friday with Maryland, Loyola and Johns Hopkins all earning spots in the tournament.

Johns Hopkins practiced Wednesday, preparing for Friday’s game against Fairfield at Yale.

The Blue Jays received an at-large bid with a record of 11 and 7.

But you have to look deeper at their season than the record.

Hopkins played the toughest schedule in the country with 11 of its 18 games against ranked opponents.

The Jays faced first-ranked Northwestern in a one-point loss in the Big Ten Tournament last week.

They hope to build on this performance.

“Last year, maybe we didn’t think we could compete with anyone,” Johns Hopkins senior Jordan Carr said. “Our schedule is very strong, which shows we can play any team in the country. We were there (against Northwestern) the whole game. We came back from a five-goal deficit. So being able to come back and doing it’s a one goal game and playing almost 60, just being able to go out and do that against any team we play is something we took away from that.

“Any time you can do that, there’s some success, so we were able to do that for 55 minutes together the other day and that’s what we were looking for,” Johns Hopkins coach Tim said McCormack. “So it’s always a good thing when you can do that.”

Also Friday, Loyola will face Duke at the University of Pennsylvania and Maryland’s No. 4 seed Robert Morris.