"I don’t think our team had quite the right approach to the game," he said Tuesday morning. "We’re a product of our preparation and being excited and enthusiastic. I just didn’t sense that in pre-game and in the locker room. Now, that doesn’t mean that the guys weren’t excited to play, but I just think the guys allowed themselves to be distracted by two convincing wins and the game that Siena had against Stony Brook where they gave up 21 goals. … I just don’t think we played with the necessary energy and effort, and I don’t think we showed the maturity level that we needed to show to put the two wins behind us and put Princeton at M&T Bank behind us. Simply put, we didn’t play well. They played well, and we did not. We turned the ball over. That was probably the most consistent thing we did, turn it over. If you watched us in the first two games, we’ve got some young guys who turned it over here, but that wasn’t a consistent thing, and in the first two games, we played extremely hard. And yet, we go into this one, and it’s one of those trap games. They think they’re getting you at the right time, and you as a coach know that if we don’t show up and play well, anything can happen. And it almost did."

One area of concern has been the team’s inability to protect the ball. Johns Hopkins has turned the ball over 60 times, which is the most in a three-game span since the school recorded turnovers in 2003.

Pietramala said that he is almost willing to deal with turnovers from the large number of freshmen who have been playing, but that wasn’t the case when the Blue Jays coughed up 29 turnovers against Siena.

"This past Sunday, it was unacceptable," he said. "It kind of went beyond the growth process, and to be honest with you, it wasn’t just the young guys. It was everyone. Everyone took their turn. [Senior goalkeeper] Michael Gvozden took his turn one time, throwing the ball out of bounds. [Senior midfielder] Michael Kimmel took his turn, [senior midfielder] Max Chautin took his turn, [senior attackman] Steven Boyle took his turn. … Hopefully, it was a very, very valuable learning experience."

Johns Hopkins will meet Princeton on Saturday, but senior attackman Chris Boland’s status remains unchanged.

"Chris has his timetable from us, and when he’s out there, he’s out there," Pietramala said of the suspension of Boland, who has sat out the first three games. "We’ve always felt like anything that goes on with our team, we try to take care of it very privately, and it’s not meant to be disrespectful to the media or the fans. We just think it’s an in-house thing, and our kids and our program deserve that privacy. We’ve handled, and Chris knows when he’ll be back, and when that time comes, you’ll see him out on the field."