WASHINGTON — Only minutes before kickoff yesterday, Terrapin men’s soccer coach Sasho Cirovski took a call inside Georgetown’s North Kehoe Field complex.

On the phone was the father of defender Alex Lee, who was hospitalized Saturday night after being struck by a car while crossing a street in Washington. Lee, who had just been cleared for release from George Washington University Hospital, wanted to be at the game — even if he couldn’t be in uniform.

Cirovski thought better of it.

“Please stay home,” Cirovski told Lee’s father. “We’ll take care of it.”

He was right. A depleted No. 9 Terp squad, whose nightmarish weekend might have turned Tuesday’s match into an afterthought, got just enough to give Lee the 2-1 victory he’d hoped to see firsthand.

“The emotional energy that the players expended … I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Cirovski said. “They showed me how much they care about Alex and the type of character they have inside them. This was a great win.”

At one point, it was uncertain that the game would ever take place. After Lee’s accident, Cirovski gave the game the green light only after his starting defender’s condition stabilized and all signs pointed toward a full recovery.

Even if he wasn’t there physically, Lee’s presence symbolically and spiritually at Georgetown was unmistakable. The Terps wore white wristbands inscribed with “AL18” in honor of their teammate, and their play in the game’s opening minutes would have probably elicited a smile of satisfaction from their offensive-minded right back.

Even without Lee or the team’s growing number of injured starters — forward Casey Townsend and midfielders Matt Kassel and Doug Rodkey all sat out Tuesday’s action — the Terps (8-3-1) looked quite comfortable on the attack. Eight minutes in, midfielder Drew Yates chested down a ball inside the box before easily finding the net with a strike from 15 yards out.

Four minutes later, forward Jason Herrick drove toward the heart of the Hoyas’ (8-4-1) backline as forward Matt Oduaran looped around him to his right. Herrick looked off Oduaran and, seeing goalkeeper Mark Wilber cheating off his mark to where he expected Oduaran might collect the ball, uncorked a low line drive that just found the corner of the goal for his fifth tally of the year and a 2-0 lead.

“We just came out with a fire under us, and it showed,” Yates said.

When the offense began to sputter, though, Lee’s absence soon became of consequence.

Georgetown halved the deficit in the 32nd minute after midfielder Jimmy Nealis, operating in the same territory Lee had patrolled for 11 straight games, controlled a poor clearance and drove a shot past goalkeeper Zac MacMath.

With a beating wind in their faces and injured defender Kevin Tangney on the bench to start the second half, the Terps retreated to a defensive posture for much of the final 45 minutes. The Hoyas outshot the Terps 12-2 during that stretch, but couldn’t crack a retooled defense featuring seldom-used Greg Young and Kwame Darko, who started his first game this season.

“It was an impressive performance,” Cirovski said. “It would have been a really good performance anyway, but in light of the injury situation and what happened with Alex, this was a pretty incredible performance.”

Cirovski said the entire team had signed a ball they planned to deliver to Lee afterward.

But it was something else that they couldn’t package that probably mattered most.

“[Cirovski] just wanted us to have a complete effort,” Yates said, “and bring the win home for Alex.”

shaffer@umdbk.com