PISCATAWAY, N.J. – No. 6 Rutgers men's lacrosse returns to the road this weekend for another contest against a ranked Big Ten Conference foe. The Scarlet Knights will play at No. 14 Johns Hopkins on Saturday at 1 p.m. The game will be live-streamed on ESPN3, and will be nationally televised with a tape-delayed broadcast time of 8 a.m. on the following day, Sunday March 21.

The Scarlet Knights enter the contest at 3-1 overall. The team took its first setback of the season last weekend, falling 19-12 at No. 3 Maryland. The game was even at 9-9 at halftime and a one-goal contest through 45 minutes before the Terps took control in the final frame.

Rutgers has been buoyed through four games by the offensive performances of its veteran starting attack line. Graduate student Adam Charlambides leads the team with 16 goals, and has added seven assists for a team-best 23 points. Alongside him, sixth-year senior Kieran Mullins has eight goals and a team-high 11 assists for a team-high 19 points, while graduate transfer Connor Kirst has 11 goals and seven assists in his first season as a Scarlet Knight.

That trio has been boosted by the excellent play of three-time Big Ten Freshman of the Week Shane Knobloch. The Moorestown, N.J. native has 10 goals to lead RU's midfielders. The team averages 16.75 goals per game, which includes two 22-goal outbursts that matched the program's best scoring total in a game dating back to 2010.

In the cage, Colin Kirst holds a 12.73 goals-against-average and .515 save percentage.  The Scarlet Knights also get key performances from their rope unit, with Ethan Rall and Zach Masessa leading the long-stick midfielders. The team rotates four primary short-stick defensive midfielders – Brennan Kammish, Tommy Coyne, Cole Daninger and Zackary Francowiak. The quarter all possess the ability to remain on the field on the offensive end, helping the team push the tempo and pace to their advantage.

The Blue Jays earned a 13-6 win last weekend over No. 12 Penn State at Homewood Field to improve to 2-2 on the season under first year head coach Peter Milliman. The team has alternated wins and losses, falling to the two top-10 foes its played this season, dropping contests to No. 10 Ohio State and No. 3 Maryland, while defeating No. 12 Penn State and at Michigan.

Senior Connor DeSimone leads the team with 11 goals and six assists for 17 points, while Joey Epstein has scored 12 times. In goal, Josh Kirson holds a 11.39 goals-against-average. At the faceoff 'X', Matt Narewski is 44-of-81 (.543) with 23 ground balls.

The game marks the 41^st meeting all time between the two squads, with the Blue Jays holding a 34-6 lead. In 2015, both teams joined the Big Ten, with the Scarlet Knights entrance into the conference leading to the league adding Johns Hopkins as an affiliate member. Since both teams became conference rivals, JHU owns a 4-2 advantage. Rutgers' two victories over the Blue Jays came during the memorable 2016 campaign, when RU first defeated No. 11 Johns Hopkins 16-9 in a home game, then went to Homewood Field for the Big Ten semifinals and earned a 14-12 victory. Two goal scorers from the 2016 conference, Adam Charalambides and Zackary Franckowiak, remain on the 2021 roster. Franckowiak was named to the Big Ten All-Tournament Team after that postseason at Homewood Field, then spent the next two years in St. Petersburg, Russia on an LDS Mission, before returning to Rutgers. Charalambides has taken three medical redshirts to remain at Rutgers, currently in his seventh collegiate year.

This game, the fifth of the season, wraps the Scarlet Knights' first trip through the league schedule, as they will have faced all five league foes. The team will have one more scheduled matchup with each conference team, with the home and away designations flipped. The Blue Jays will return the meeting with a trip to SHI Stadium on Saturday, April 17.

The tape-delay on ESPNU marks the second straight RU contest that will air on national television. The Scarlet Knights will also play live on ESPNU next Sunday versus Ohio State, on Big Ten Network for the home game against Maryland, and another ESPNU appearance for the final at Michigan.