Coaches don’t celebrate victories. They merely breathe in, consider the painful alternative, and exhale with far more relief than joy.

So it was with Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse coach Dave Pietramala. Minutes after the 10th-ranked Blue Jays may have salvaged their season Saturday night with a dramatic, 8-7 overtime victory at No. 7 Maryland, Pietramala sat outside the raucous Hopkins locker room, looking as if he had just had a root canal.

“Winning doesn’t make coaches happy. We’re relieved when we win. We enjoy it for about an hour,” said Pietramala, who had not tasted victory since March 17. “The losses kill you. They stay with you.”

Not since 1990 had the Blue Jays (5-4) lost three in a row. Saturday, following a game-winning shot by junior midfielder Paul Rabil, Hopkins not only avoided its first, four-game slide in 17 years, but earned its second win of the season over a Top 10 opponent.

Both of them have come in overtime -- a 7-6, double-overtime victory over Princeton is the other -- and both have been won by Rabil. Unless the Blue Jays slip up badly and finish the regular season with a losing record, they will go to their 36th consecutive NCAA tournament.

“Losing three in a row is something I’ve never done in any sport. No one in my family has,” said Hopkins senior attackman Jake Byrne, who scored a goal against the 8-4 Terps.

But Hopkins knows as much as anyone how slim the margin of error has become in the parity-heightened world of college lacrosse. The Blue Jays have lost four games by a combined eight goals, all against Top 10 teams.

Up north at Syracuse, the Orange has fallen into a 4-6 hole, and needs to win its last three games just to get to the postseason. Next up is undefeated, No. 2 Albany on Friday at the Carrier Dome.

The Great Danes, coached by Hopkins alum Scott Marr, edged Hopkins in its season opener two months ago. Syracuse has not missed the tournament since 1982, and has been to the NCAA tournament’s final four every year during that run, except 2005.

Pietramala looked at how Princeton fell flat in 2005 and missed the NCAAs, and how Virginia hit the skids in 2004, a year after winning the national championship.

“I think what we’re finding is none of us is immune to it,” he said.

The Blue Jays, however, may have warded off the illness for one more year.