If you want to beat the champs, you better knock them out
· Yahoo Sports
Things looked less than stellar for the Wildcats as the buzzer sounded for halftime. The No. 1 Terrapins were outshooting the hosts 4-2 and had effectively punched NU in the mouth by converting off of both of its penalty corners to start the game. NU hadn’t registered a shot since Olivia Bent-Cole’s first quarter equalizer, and had squandered its own penalty corner attempt by sending it wide. Entries beyond each team’s 23-meter line were few and far between. Possession was constantly changing hands in the middle of the park, defenses were tightening up before either side could carve out true concrete scoring chances on a consistent basis.
The game was best defined as a war in the midfield.
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A war that Northwestern was, on paper, losing.
Losing, no less, in the biggest moment of the season.
For a team coming off two consecutive national championships, this was as big of a regular season game as they come. A three-goal win in Bloomington wasn’t enough to wash away the sour taste left in its mouth after its loss to Princeton. Looking at the No. 2 next to the squad’s name in this week’s NFCHA poll was a constant reminder of what that defeat meant.
As important as it was to avoid losing a second regular season game for the first time since 2022, last night was supposed to be an opportunity to make a statement. An opportunity to go out on the field and prove that, regardless of record, Northwestern never stopped being the No. 1 team in the country. Not for a single second.
The ’Cats were 15 minutes away from allowing that statement to fall on deaf ears. Things needed to change, and it started with addressing the source of the two goals conceded: Penalty corners.
“We adjusted our trails, especially on the right side, to push up and try to get to their tippers. And then our flyers needed to take one for the team and just run down the line and get hit,” head coach Tracy Fuchs said postgame about what adjustments were made at the half.
Maryland earned five penalty corners in the second half. Its conversion rate fell from 100% in the first all the way down to zero in the next 30 minutes of the contest.
The key to NU’s comeback was in the second half of Fuchs’ quote. For all the talent on this roster, the ’Cats didn’t simply flip a switch and outclass Maryland through pure stick work to win. They entrenched themselves in the unflattering dirty work.
NU came out of the halftime break and dominated. It didn’t win more penalty corners, the Terps’ had four to its zero. It didn’t win in terms of shots — again the Terps’ had three and NU didn’t register any. Where the ’Cats blew away the Terrapins was in the work rate department.
Maryland spent most of the half struggling to get out of its own end of the field. The front line for NU was relentless in its press, speeding up Maryland’s offense and forcing the Terps’ into areas where the defense could swarm to the ball behind them.
So many times the front line came inches away from winning the ball back in and around Maryland’s 23-meter line. Sometimes the ball would roll under the outstretched stick of an NU attacker, other times a deflected pass would wiggle its way to a Maryland back, even with multiple Wildcats bearing down on the ball. There were no goals scored in the third period, but it was in that quarter where the game was won for NU.
Maryland had its opportunities (three in a row, actually) to provide a knockout blow on the penalty corner, and it could not convert. Meanwhile, NU had spent 15 minutes banging on the door, threatening to break it down.
Olivia Bent-Cole spoke on the effect on continuous pressure, saying “pressing is something where you don’t always get a reward right away, so just keep doing it and they’ll eventually make a mistake. It’s not rewarding in the moment, but it will pay off.”
It paid off in the first minute of the fourth quarter. Ashley Sessa dove across the turf to intercept a Terrapin pass deep in their own territory. The ’Cats drove forward and the ball found Bent-Cole on the right side of the circle. She unleashed a shot that flew past the outstretched leg of Maryland goalie Alyssa Klebasko. The ’Cats drew level, the reward had finally come and the door had been blown off its hinges.
Nothing was a more fitting encapsulation of this game than that play. Sessa, an NFHCA Player of the Year candidate, NU’s top scorer and points leader on the year, had the biggest play of the game and it wasn’t even in the circle. It wasn’t even on offense, where she thrives the most.
“She gets so much credit for what she does in the circle and her beautiful goals. But her work rate is unbelievable, and her ability to tackle back into what we consider as ‘fake space’ where she looks like she’s going to come inside and baits them into sending it. She had a great performance as well,” Fuchs said.
It was from that point on the floodgates opened for NU. The intensity never faltered, and the ’Cats would find the go-ahead goal six minutes later off a penalty corner of their own. Bent-Cole completed her hat trick from nearly the exact spot on the turf where she secured the brace. A fourth goal delivered by Sol Martinez put the game out of reach.
Comeback complete.
Victory secured.
Statement made.
Bent-Cole’s first career hat trick will steal all the headlines, and deservedly so, but even in the postgame the first thing Fuchs made sure to highlight her intensity on both ends.
“That was probably [her] best all around game on both sides of the ball. Her ability to tackle back…she put them home today,” Fuchs said.
Even Bent-Cole herself had more to say about the team’s intensity than about her career night.
“I think just having high energy and not letting them score another goal was super crucial for us. Whether it was me pressing, Ashley pressing, we were all just trying to press as a unit and make sure they weren’t scoring any more goals so that we’d come out with a win.”
If you needed any indicator on the mentality of this team, you’re not going to find a better one than that.