Two times this season, Northwestern lacrosse lost a game. Two times this season, opposing teams rushed the Ryan Fieldhouse turf after the final buzzer sounded, hugging each other as their cheers echoed through the indoor facility.
First, it was Northwestern’s 10-9 loss Feb. 9 against an unranked Colorado team, which celebrated by taking group photos with a giant Buffaloes flag in front of the scoreboard. Then it was No. 14 Syracuse’s 9-6 win over the ‘Cats Thursday night, accompanied by “Let’s Go
Cuse” chants from the Orange faithful in the game’s waning minutes.
That’s what it means to beat a 2020s-era Northwestern lacrosse squad that doesn’t usually let up in this manner.
Of course, that’s not to discredit Colorado and Syracuse. The Buffaloes are 4-2 to start the season, while the Orange are better than their record shows, with competitive losses against No. 1 North Carolina, No. 2 Stanford and No. 3 Maryland.
But Northwestern hadn’t lost multiple home games in a season since 2020. To break that streak in the way it did Thursday night was nothing short of disappointing.
“We struggled to be aggressive in what we wanted to do,” Northwestern head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said. “We have to learn from that. They’re a great team, they have a lot of athletic kids and we just got to regroup.”
The statistics tell a lot already. Northwestern committed 21 turnovers — even more than in the Colorado game, where protecting the ball was already a problem. The Wildcats’ top four scorers in Madison Taylor, Aditi Foster, Taylor Lapointe and Olivia Adamson combined for 11 of those.
Meanwhile, Taylor (who averages nearly five goals a game) was held to just one goal on four shots while Foster and Adamson were scoreless. To put Northwestern’s attacking struggles in perspective, its leading scorer with two goals was Annabel Child, a midfielder.
Beyond the numbers, Northwestern was playing catch-up from start to finish. The minute and eight seconds after Child’s opening goal with 13:25 left in the opening quarter was the first and only time the Wildcats led on Thursday — and one of the few times they even had a player cutting into the crease area.
Then, the struggle bus hit. Syracuse got going between the thirds as a result of its own transition play speed and Northwestern’s inability to recover loose ground balls on the attack. Molly Guzik scored three goals in under four minutes, giving the Orange an early 3-1 lead. That lead would have been even larger had the goalpost beside NU keeper Jenika Cuocco not robbed Syracuse of multiple scoring chances in the first frame when it outshot the Wildcats 12-4.
Amonte Hiller said Northwestern switched its defensive coverage after Guzik’s early hat trick, and to her credit, it worked. The Wildcat defense performed much better from then on, not allowing a Syracuse goal in the final eight minutes of the first quarter. However, the offense couldn’t replicate the same success to end the initial quarter, and then into the second.
Sure, Lapointe found the net at the end of the first. In the second quarter, a Maddie Epke free position and an acrobatic Child shot (made while a Syrcause defender rammed into her) helped negate goals from Guzik and Bri Peters that opened the frame. But even as Northwestern headed into halftime down just 5-4, the offensive problems that plagued it to start the game weren’t going away.
Taylor, the player who usually leads Northwestern’s offense in both scoring and playmaking, barely got the ball and finished the first half without taking a single shot. In fact, none of the Wildcats’ primary attackers were receiving the ball all that much, with players like first-year Kyle Finnell and Jenna Soto recording more touches than they typically get. The ‘Cats constantly passed to each other on the outskirts of the attacking third or behind the net, but rarely within the fan.
“They played great zone defense. They were pressuring us out, pinching in areas, containing our players,” Amonte Hiller said of the Orange.
If the halftime score gave Wildcats fans hope of a comeback, the second half extinguished it. Syracuse scored four goals unanswered in the opening 25 minutes of the second half, going up to a 9-4 lead with 4:54 left in the fourth. While Guzik, who led all players with six goals, nearly outscored the Wildcats herself, the problem again wasn’t the defense (the Orange scored just one more goal than it did last season, when Northwestern beat them 12-8). Instead, the issue was the turnovers continuing to pile up, while the Wildcats struggled to capitalize on their opportunities — passing off free position shots or firing way wide.
Northwestern attempted to make one final push at the end of the fourth quarter after Noel Cumberland broke her team’s scoring drought with 3:57 remaining. A quick Syracuse turnover then helped Taylor avoid going scoreless for the first time since the 2025 NCAA Tournament, as she made the score 9-6 Syracuse with a gritty goal through contact. It was too little, too late for the Wildcats, though, as the Orange defense did just enough to run out the clock and secure their upset.
The adage for perennially winning teams is that occasional losses are supposed to be turning points, the pivotal moment that motivates them toward a long winning streak. But between Thursday, the Colorado loss and the match against No. 13 Stony Brook that was decided by one goal, it’s clear that Northwestern is struggling against top opponents in a way that it didn’t in years past.
The road isn’t going to get any easier, either — in the coming weeks, the ‘Cats still have Maryland, North Carolina and No. 8 Johns Hopkins on their docket. If the Wildcats are struggling to produce against top-ranked teams right now, Big Ten play is going to get a lot more complicated.
Amonte Hiller wants her squad to move on, win or lose, to Sunday’s matchup against Ohio State, and that’s the mentality it needs to avoid spiraling. But Northwestern’s struggles, especially its stagnancy on offense, are consistent issues that need to be addressed.
“The season brings you what you need,” Amonte Hiller said. “Obviously, we needed to be tested today, and hopefully, we get some growth from it.”
On Thursday night, and against Colorado before that, Northwestern lacrosse put up an uncharacteristic performance. The goal now is to ensure that said performances don’t become the new norm.
