PRINCETON, N.J, May 19 – After three minutes of play, Georgetown was in good shape.

The defense had stopped Johns Hopkins on its first possession, and freshman midfielder Andrew Brancaccio had just put the Hoyas ahead 1-0 with a left-handed laser beam into the goal’s bottom-right corner from 12-yards out. Georgetown’s offense was aggressive, sending a flurry of hard shots at the Johns Hopkins goal in the early going while the Blue Jays struggled to fire on the Hoya keeper.

It looked like this year could be different. It looked like Georgetown had a good shot at finally advancing to the Final Four for the first time since 1999 after losing in the quarterfinals five years in a row.

But the Hoyas’ hopes faded fast. Four minutes later, the Blue Jays tied the game. Then they scored again. And again. And again. Johns Hopkins led 6-1 at halftime and went on to win 14-6 in front of 8,123 fans at Princeton Stadium.

“We lost today because Hopkins was the better team,” Georgetown Head Coach Dave Urick said. “And that’s the bottom line. That’s it. They played better than we did.”

After allowing the goal to Brancaccio, third-seeded Johns Hopkins (11-4) played smothering defense, holding Georgetown junior attacker Brendan Cannon, the ECAC offensive player of the year, without a point to his name. The Blue Jays were also sharp on the offensive end, as they expertly rotated the ball and capitalized on almost every scoring opportunity.

“Their offense made very few mistakes today,” Georgetown senior defender Jerry Lambe said. “They were very precise with their passing. They worked it around really quickly.”

Johns Hopkins Head Coach Dave Pietramala and his players agreed.

“I thought it was the first game we played for 60 minutes,” Pietramala said.

“I think the ball moved as well today on our offensive end as it has all year,” junior attacker Kevin Huntley said.

“I thought we executed our game plan almost perfectly,” senior goalie Jesse Schwartzman said.

Pietramala said that Johns Hopkins made a key adjustment after Brancaccio’s goal. He said that the Blue Jays originally focused on forcing the sixth-seeded Hoyas (12-3) to shoot with their weak hands, but they abandoned that approach after Brancaccio scored with his weak hand.

“We felt like when Brancaccio got his first shot, and he got a good shot off from a good spot on the field, it’s concerning because that’s what you want to give them, and all of a sudden what you want to give them, they just took,” Pietramala said. “They obviously were prepared for that, very well-prepared. So we simplified everything and we went back to basics.”

From Cannon’s perspective, the Hoyas’ offense changed for the worse after Brancaccio’s goal.

“Early on we generated our first goal off of good team offense, and then we kind of got away from that with a little too much one-on-one,” Cannon said.

As the first quarter progressed, though, Georgetown lost its edge, letting go of sloppy passes and struggling at the X.

The Hoyas went scoreless for nearly 30 minutes after Brancaccio’s goal. Senior midfielder Ryan Still connected on an open look from eight yards out two and a half minutes into the third quarter, but Johns Hopkins responded with a goal four minutes after that to go up 7-2.

Throughout the game, Georgetown paid much attention to Johns Hopkins junior midfielder Paul Rabil, the team’s leading scorer and a 2006 first team all-American. The Hoyas were able to prevent Rabil from scoring, but he did pick up three assists. Huntley, who entered the game as the team’s fifth-leading scorer with 14 goals on the season, notched a game-high five goals.

“We certainly were well-aware of [Rabil] defensively, and designed whatever we thought we needed to do to deal with him,” Urick said. “But obviously they have other guys who can stick it in the goal, and they were able to execute. You have to give them credit.”

When asked about how it feels to lose in the quarterfinals for the sixth consecutive year, Urick said that it does not really bother him – only eight teams made it to the second round and that kind of achievement is something for his team to be proud of.

Now the Hoyas will go into the offseason with a familiar goal – to finally reach the Final Four next year.

“We’re going to keep banging on the door, and we’ll knock it down one of these days,” Urick said.