UNC's Levy Downplays Northwestern Rematch
by Clare Lochary | Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
Does it get any bigger than this? No. 1 versus No. 2? A rematch
of the national championship? With an all-time record on the
line?
Honestly, North Carolina head coach Jenny Levy sounds pretty chill
about the whole thing.
“This team has worked hard and been really focused.
They’ve really competed hard against each other at times in
practice that no one will ever see unless they were there. We just
try to take one game at a time and get better every day,”
said Levy, whose No. 2-ranked Tar Heels will play No. 1
Northwestern in Evanston on Sunday.
The Wildcats, who stomped North Carolina 21-7 in last year’s
NCAA Division I championship game, have been ranked No. 1 in by
IWCLA polls for 24 consecutive weeks, dating back to May 5, 2008.
That ties a record set by Maryland between April 2, 1995 and March
9, 1998.
While Northwestern is currently on a 40-game winning streak,
beating North Carolina is by no means an easy feat. The Tar Heels
(12-1) have won six in a row, including recent victories over ACC
foes Maryland and Duke. (Their one loss came in overtime to
Virginia.) The handy 13-9 victory over the then-undefeated and
second-ranked Terps boosted the Tar Heels to a No. 2 ranking. That
result versus Maryland -- along with last year’s semifinal
upset over the Terps -- surprised many in the lacrosse world, but
not Levy.
“We heard a lot of that last year. You guys are up in
Baltimore. You’re reading about Maryland all the time, and
you drink the red juice and that’s fine. We’re
fortunate because we’re down in North Carolina in Chapel
Hill, and we can go about our business and get better on a day-in
and day-out basis,” said Levy.
North Carolina got points from seven different players against the
Terps, which is typical of the Tar Heels’ balanced attack.
Levy has eight different players scoring in double digits (four of
whom are shooting over .500), but no true breakout star. She likes
it that way.
“We don’t have one kid who’s going to score 100
points this season, but together we move the ball well.
There’s some games where two or three players step up, and
there’s another game were another two or three players step
up,” said Levy.
Defensively, the Tar Heels are anchored by first-team All-American
goalie Logan Ripley, who returned to play after sitting out fall
ball for medical reasons and has returned better than ever. She put
up a career high-tying 13 saves versus Maryland, and has the best
goals against average in the nation (6.16).
There is the specter of last year’s championship loss
hovering over Sunday’s game, but Levy says it’s not
overwhelming.
“We lost and got pummeled by a great Northwestern team who,
you know, for the first 15, 20 minutes of that game, they
absolutely jumped down our pants and dragged us all over the field.
And it certainly motivated us to work hard,” said Levy.
“But it has nothing to do about revenge. I don’t think
the national championship game from last year is on our mind at
all. It was on our mind last summer, and I think it was on our mind
in the fall when we made the decision to do an extra half an hour
of work or not. But not now. We see it as another great challenge
to see how great we can be. It’s a great measure to go
against a great team.”
North Carolina lost its regular season game to Northwestern, 12-7,
in Chapel Hill last year, a match-up that was drawn out over two
days due to a freak snowstorm. The game began on March 1 and was
cancelled after less than 11 minutes, with the Tar Heels leading
4-2. The next day, the Northwestern and North Carolina players and
coaches personally shoveled off a field with the maintenance crews
to finally play the game. This year, they’ll be playing at
Lakeside, where the weather should be sunny and in the high
50s.
“We do have some choices in life and one of those choices is
to not play at Northwestern in February,” joked Levy.
