Take your mind back to the aftermath of the Oct. 22 matchup between these two teams. Northwestern was down early and often, clawing out of a deficit two separate times to ultimately run out 4-2 winners thanks to some individual brilliance from Olivia Bent-Cole, intense pressing from the entire frontline and halftime adjustments from Tracy Fuchs that limited Maryland’s penalty corners.
That game came at a pivotal time in Northwestern’s season. The Wildcats were trying to reclaim their spot as the best
team in the country and prevent itself from losing for a second time in three contests; they succeeded on both those fronts while taking the hardest road possible.
In the postgame, Bent-Cole talked about how a win like that, one filled with adversity, could prove extremely beneficial for NU in the long run.
“I think it’s a good test for us to be down and then score and then they score again,” Bent-Cole said. “All of these [games] are going to teach us lessons going into the postseason, [both] Big Ten and NCAA.”
On Sunday, Northwestern took down Maryland again, this time 3-0, to win a Big Ten Tournament title. If there is anything to take away from the ’Cats’ second win against the Terrapins in the last three weeks, it’s this: NU learned its lessons from the adversity it faced in the regular season.
Because by all means this Big Ten Title game could have, and maybe should have, been a repeat script of the last meeting. Two games ago, the Wildcats suffered their second defeat of the season, getting blanked by Penn State at University Park when it had a chance to become outright Big Ten regular season champions.
That game wasn’t enough to cost NU its spot as the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, but it did cost the ’Cats their spot as the No. 1 team in the country. Yet again, they were overtaken by the Terrapins in the NHFCA coaches’ poll. Yet again this game was billed as a clash of titans, a contest that was likely to go down to the wire in the same way the first one did.
But that simply wasn’t the case on Sunday. The ’Cats outplayed the Terrapins in every single phase of the game. Maryland came into the game earning 15 penalty corners across its first two tournament games. NU held it to two with a conversion rate of zero, with Fuchs’ adjustments at halftime of the two teams’ last meeting carrying over into this one. Maryland led in shots after the end of the first half, but its chances weren’t of the same quality that NU’s were, and Juliana Boon was up to the task each and every time.
The most impressive part of the whole game was NU holding Maryland to a single shot on goal in the second half without the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Ilse Tromp in the lineup at all. Bree Moffett, Kerry McCormick and Emilie Kirschner all stepped up and did a brilliant job keeping the potent Terrapin attack quiet.
Many of the postgame comments from Fuchs and Ashley Sessa after this contest echoed the ones from Oct. 22. Fuchs yet again mentioned the team’s ability to “tackle back and put a ton of pressure on opposing teams.”
Sessa emphasized that the attack, for all its talent, prides itself on the unflattering dirty work that it often does, just like Bent-Cole did two-and-a-half weeks ago. “We’re not afraid of getting down and dirty on the ground… Being really gritty on the press, diving, not being afraid to get hit with the ball, is something that I think we pride ourselves on.”
I think the reason why the takeaways sound so similar is simple: this team has things figured out. This is a team that already knew how to win — the back-to-back national championships were proof enough of that. But now they keep finding new ways to do so. Each game adds a new wrinkle to an already near unbeatable scheme. A team loaded with talent gets better in the mental aspect with each passing contest. Up against the No. 1 team in the nation in October, the ‘Cats had to make up solutions on the fly: now it feels like they have answers to every single test.
When asked about preparing for the NCAA Tournament, Tracy Fuchs said, “We’re just going to play our game, and hopefully good things will come.”
When this team is firing on all cylinders, good things, and hardware, become inevitable.
