Johns Hopkins at crossroads in storied history
The Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse program is at a crossroads.
If new coach Peter Milliman doesn’t turn the Blue Jays around in four or five years, they could disappear from the major national lacrosse scene, like Washington & Lee did in 1987.
Hopkins athletic director Jen Baker took a major gamble for the university, as well as her own job security, when she officially named Milliman the new head coach Monday.
Compared with some of the other candidates, Milliman might be considered too young and inexperienced for the job, and the move certainly agitated a lot of the Hopkins’ blue-blood fans who wanted an alumnus in that position.
That’s the major rub: How could Baker have the audacity to hire someone outside the fold?
Milliman better win.
Former Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow faced a similar situation in 2010 when she fired lacrosse coach Dave Cottle and brought in coach John Tillman. Terps alumni weren’t as adamant about hiring a coach who had previous
Johns Hopkins.
In her first public comments since the university announced April 14 that it had parted ways with Pietramala, who in 20 seasons became the program’s all-time winningest coach with 207 victories, Baker acknowledged the awkward timing of the announcement.
“It’s never an ideal time to make changes, it just isn’t,” she said. “And we landed where we did, and it was clear that we both felt like it was time to go in a new direction, and it so happened that timing was unfortunately April in the middle of the situation that we’re in.”
Milliman is the first head coach with no ties to the school since Tony Seaman helmed the program from 1991 to 1998. Baker said that a candidate who possessed high character, could provide a positive experience for the players and was positioned to guide the program to success was a higher priority than a candidate with a Blue Jays background.
“What I said from the outset was I wanted to hire the best possible coach for this program to lead us into the future,” she said. “There are great coaches on both sides of that. There’s nothing that was deliberate about it. It really was about those non-negotiables and identifying who met those as a baseline criteria and then who beyond that did we feel like was the best possible leader for our young men and for the future of the program.”
ESPN analyst Paul Carcaterra acknowledged that Millman’s short tenure with the Big Red might not excite the Johns Hopkins fanbase or alumni network. But he pointed out that there are few candidates with extensive success as head coaches on the market.
“You’re hiring a guy that you believe in – that’s what my understanding would be,” the former All-American Syracuse midfielder said of the thought process behind the hiring. “It’s more of what you think he’s capable of, of what you’ve seen in his short stint as a head coach. You dissect it and look at some big wins in there, some top-10 wins in there and some big Ivy League wins in there. When you peel the onion, you can see some promise.”
While respectful of the legacy left behind by Pietramala — who guided Johns Hopkins to NCAA championships in 2005 and 2007 and is the only person in college lacrosse history to capture an NCAA Division I national championship as a player (in 1987) and as a coach — Milliman said that he intends to be himself.
“My goal is to serve Johns Hopkins University and the lacrosse program as well as I can,” he said. “Dave Pietramala is as much a part of that legacy as anybody, and everything that he’s done there is what I’m looking to continue to build on. With respect to everything he’s done there, it’s not easy to follow a legend like that, but I’m going to try to focus on the young men on this team and do as well as I can to give them a great experience.”
Big Ten Network/ESPN analyst Mark Dixon said that the spotlight will be on Milliman.
“I do think that Coach Milliman needs to get off to a fast start,” said Dixon, who was a midfielder for the Blue Jays from1991 to 1994. “I think he does need to hit the ground running, and that will be on the field with wins and losses. Even if he does have some early success, it still might be a while before he gets out of the shadow of Dave Pietramala. … He is a legend at Johns Hopkins, and it’s never easy to replace a legend. But all Peter Milliman can do is be the best coach that he can be, assemble the best staff that he can, and then have that team perform at a really high level and play exciting lacrosse.”
Milliman said that he met with the current Blue Jays players at 8:30 a.m. and is open to forming a coaching staff with ties to the program.
Milliman will take over a program that lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament three times since 2016 and earned spots in the postseason with identical 7-7 records in 2016 and 2017. The 2020 team ended a four-game losing skid by rallying from a four-goal deficit to edge Mount St. Mary’s in overtime on March 10. He said that he understands the task. “I think every top program comes with expectations,” he said. “I wouldn’t consider it pressure as much as expectations. But those are the environments where you’re going to build a championship-caliber team, the kind of environments that high-level athletes and really competitive young men want to be a part of. It has a lot of scrutiny from the outside, but if you have the right people and you’re bringing the program the right way, it’s going to help build and strengthen the program that you have there.”