Virginia Lacrosse Set to Renew Rivalry With Johns Hopkins in Top 10 Showdown
The long and epic history of the Virginia-Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse rivalry will see a new chapter written on Saturday afternoon, when the Blue Jays visit the Cavaliers at Klockner Stadium for a top 10 showdown. This will be the 97th all-time meeting between these two historic programs, who have the second and third-most NCAA titles, combining to win 16 national championships.
And for the first time since 2018, both teams will be ranked in the top 10 at the time of the game as Johns Hopkins is ranked No. 8 in the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll and No. 7 in the USILA Top 20, while Virginia is ranked No. 2 in both polls.
"It'd be lying to say it's just another game," said UVA head coach Lars Tiffany this week. "This is, for our alumni, especially our older generational alumni from the 70s and 80s, this is the Game, easily. Now that you have both teams in the top 10, this game does remind me of the 90s and the 2000s, when it was always a battle every year, year in, year out. This is an exciting one for college lacrosse and certainly for our men."
It's been a long journey for the Blue Jays to return to the ranks of the elite in college lacrosse after three-consecutive seasons going sub-.500 from 2020-2022. In year three under head coach Pete Milliman, Johns Hopkins experienced a breakthrough, going 12-6 in 2023 and advancing to the NCAA quarterfinals, where they fell to eventual national champion Notre Dame.
"Coach Milliman and staff, they really have brought this thing back quickly haven't they," Tiffany said, before expressing appreciation that this rivalry game is back on the yearly schedule. UVA and Johns Hopkins will meet for the third-straight season, but the programs did not play each other at all from 2019 to 2022. "I'm really grateful that Pete Milliman helped us bring this game back after the prior coaching staff dropped the game."
Johns Hopkins holds a 61-34-1 advantage over Virginia in the all-time series that dates back to 1904, but UVA has won the last three games and is 10-6 against the Blue Jays since the two programs began competing for the Doyle Smith Cup in 2006. The trophy was named in honor of Edward Doyle Smith, who was a manager and statistician at Johns Hopkins before spending 31 years at UVA as an assistant sports information director. Smith remains the only inductee to the U.S. Lacrosse Hall of Fame who never competed in the sport.
"We do point to Johns Hopkins as a rival and we have a cup, the Doyle Smith Cup, we battle for," Tiffany said. "And we're going to battle for that cup on Saturday. There's a lot that goes on with the Hopkins-Virginia game."
For two programs that have played three times in the National Championship Game in the NCAA era, Saturday's game features two teams that could very well find themselves competing on Championship Weekend in late May. Johns Hopkins brings back virtually the same roster as last season and, after opening the year with a tough overtime loss to Denver, the Blue Jays have bounced back to win their next four games through a tough schedule with wins over Towson, Georgetown, Loyola, and North Carolina.
Virginia has faced a similarly brutal schedule and passed with flying colors, arriving at this game with a 3-0 record, defeating three ranked opponents in the process by an average of six goals. As the Cavaliers look to improve to 4-0 and retain the Doyle Smith Cup for the fourth time in a row, they'll have to beat an opponent comfortable playing UVA's patented aggressive and fast-paced style of lacrosse.
"They are playing an up-tempo style of play. They are not afraid to be in the penalty box. They're playing aggressive. It looks a lot like us, you know? First three guys get over the midline get to go play offense and have some fun in transition," Tiffany said of the scouting report on Johns Hopkins. "And there's a confidence, there's a swagger... It's a very veteran, experienced group, playing at a high level. And so we know we got our hands full."
It seems it'll be a lot like looking in the mirror for the Cavaliers when they take the field against Johns Hopkins on Saturday at 1pm at Klockner Stadium, looking to keep the Doyle Smith Cup in Charlottesville.
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