UNC Loss Brought Wildcats Back to 'Ground Zero'
by Sean Collins Walsh | Special for Lacrosse Magazine Online
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| Northwestern senior Danielle Spencer told reporters in Evanston, Ill., that she and her teammates will try to “get some revenge on Friday" in the NCAA semifinals against North Carolina, the only team to defeat the Wildcats this year. |
EVANSTON, Ill. -- “It’s more than just a final four.”
Very few players can call the NCAA semifinals, “just a final four,” but Northwestern senior Katrina Dowd is one of them.
Seeking their program’s sixth consecutive national title, Dowd and her teammates will face North Carolina on Friday in Towson, Md. The No. 3 Tar Heels’ April 18 victory in Evanston, Ill., is the only blemish on No. 2 Northwestern’s 19-1 record.
And the Wildcats want revenge.
“We didn’t know it would come to this, but we hoped that it would,” senior Danielle Spencer said.
The 18-16 loss to the Tar Heels (17-2) broke a 41-game win streak for NU, which had not been defeated since falling to Penn in the final game of the 2008 regular season. The Wildcats avenged that loss Memorial Day weekend to take their fourth title.
For Spencer, the UNC game was a wakeup call.
“We expected to win, and we expected things to go our way,” she said. “To be honest, they’re an incredible team, but I don’t think it was so much a matter of what they did as a matter of just what we didn’t do.”
After the game, Northwestern coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said she had one question for her players: “Are you ready to start listening to us?”
Amonte Hiller won two NCAA titles as a player at Maryland to compliment her five as a coach.
“Every weekend, we evaluate our personnel,” she said. “That week after the loss, we made it very clear that this is ground zero, this is from scratch.”
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The first rule of Project Mayhem: don't ask questions. |
Amonte Hiller’s new recipe for late-season success had a familiar ingredient: young players. “I think freshmen in general tend to do well in these situations because they don’t fully get the whole aspect of the final four,” she said.
Freshman Erin Fitzgerald tallied three goals and one assist in the Cats’ 19-7 first-round victory over Notre Dame. One week later, she contributed four goals to NU’s 18-8 rout of No. 5 Duke in the quarterfinals. Amanda Macaluso, Fitzgerald’s classmate, notched three goals against the Blue Devils, as well as an assist the previous week.
Although they played regularly throughout the season, Amonte Hiller gave them both more field time after the UNC game.
Northwestern blew out North Carolina 21-7 in last year’s championship game. Amonte Hiller said that victory may have contributed to the April 18 loss.
“They wanted to prove that they could not only compete with us, but that they can beat us, and they did that,” she said. “Since then, it’s been about us.”
