Lacrosse

On a beautiful Easter Sunday at Lakeside Field, No. 6 Northwestern (8-3, 1-1 Big Ten) narrowly survived an overtime scare against No. 11 Penn (9-2, 3-0 Ivy), clinching a 9-8 win against one of the country’s top 10 defenses.

Despite losing an early advantage, the Wildcats secured the victory after a clutch goal by junior Kaleigh Craig put them ahead with just 13 seconds in the first overtime period.

“Hopefully the tight game and the overtime was a lesson,” coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said. “I’m excited that we came out with a win, but we can’t play like that anymore. We need to play as a team, come up with draw controls and be better overall.”

Despite a couple of early shots by an aggressive Penn offense, NU jumped out to a quick 4-goal lead.

Offensive powerhouse Selena Lasota put the Cats on the board first with a quick shot off a rebounded attempt just over five minutes into the game. The goal was the freshman’s 41st of the season.

Sophomore Sheila Nesselbush, senior Kara Mupo and Craig each added their own goals over the next 10 minutes, taking advantage of Penn’s low-pressure defense.

“We have a lot of really strong dodgers,” Nesselbush said. “Penn relies heavily on one-v-ones, so we knew if we could just isolate the person we’d be able to beat (the defense).”

Penn put itself on the scoreboard with 12:52 left in the first half after a feed from the top of the fan found a cutter in front of the goal.

As Penn found its offensive footing, the two teams traded a pair of goals each to head into halftime with NU up 6-3.

Although Penn edged the Cats in ground balls in the first half, NU earned a 6-4 advantage on the circle and shot almost twice as many times as the Quakers.

Penn also appeared sloppy in the first 30 minutes of play, slinging wild passes out of bounds and lacking NU’s offensive poise and patience.

But the tables turned in the second period of play. The Quakers mustered a 3-1 run in the first 14 minutes of the half to put themselves within 1 against the faltering Cats.

NU became frazzled defensively, loosing the vigilance it displayed in the first period and leaving cutters wide open in the eight-meter fan.

“I think part of the issue was that we switched from our main defense — which is really high pressure doubling — to a low pressure D,” Nesselbush said. “I think that we kind of took that as ‘take it easy,’ and the coaches brought us in and told us even though we were playing low pressure, we could still be intense.”

The Cats also lost control in the circle as a series of fouls on the draw gave the Quakers possession in the midfield.

“(Draw control is) a point of contention for us,” Amonte Hiller said. “We started off strong, then had a bunch of illegals calls. I think that kind of shifted the momentum their way.”

Penn scored two goals to NU’s one in the latter half of the period, including the tying score — a textbook crease roll — with just 1:36 to play. The Quakers and the Cats headed into the first overtime period with the score locked at 8-8.

The Cats suffered a scare in the first minutes of overtime when a hard Quaker shot bounced off the top pipe of the goal. Although Penn secured the draw at the three-minute mark, NU was able to regain possession by swarming the Penn offense.

With the clock ticking down, NU patiently passed around the 12-meter arc. After motion play left Craig open on the right side of the fan, Lasota passed her the ball and Craig ripped a hard, low angle shot just inside the left pipe of the goal with 13 seconds left.

NU held the Quakers off as the clock ran out to win 9-8.

“I was just aiming for the net. It was a good spot I guess,” Craig said. “Penn is a great team, but we’ve played tougher. We had kind of an off day honestly. We needed to pull that one out.”

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Twitter: @clairechansen