Another ranked opponent, another close loss.
Northwestern (4-7, 0-2 Big Ten) held No. 13 Iowa (7-3, 1-0) to just four shots on goal and conceded only six penalty corners — an improvement from the fifteen corners it allowed against No. 6 Penn State last Saturday.
But the Wildcats fell short again, getting behind early in a 2-1 loss to the Hawkeyes at Lakeside Field.
“I’m sick and tired of the shouldas, wouldas and couldas,” NU head coach Marisa Didio said. “At this point, I’m pretty fed up with coming close.”
The final score has no impact on either team’s Big Ten records because the game was treated as a non-conference match.
“We lost the game in the first 10 to 12 minutes,” NU coach Marisa Didio said. “We were on our heels from the very beginning and there is no reason for that.”
The Cats were in trouble from the moment the whistle blew. Iowa midfielder Tiffany Leister put the ball in the back of the net on a penalty corner 10 minutes in — but the goal was disallowed because the shot was too high off the ground.
Iowa continued to apply heavy pressure to a porous NU defense and forced another penalty corner 10 minutes later.
After the initial direct shot was blocked, senior forward Lauren Edwards jumped on a loose ball and sent it past NU goalkeeper Kendra Mesa for the 1-0 lead.
“We just came out really flat and not ready to play,” NU freshman forward Holly Palin said. “It was just disappointing that we were at home and weren’t pumped up.”
The Hawkeyes took advantage of the sluggish NU start and kept the ball on the Cats’ side of the field.
With 7:52 to go in the first half, Leister kept the ball low and scored off another corner to extend the lead to 2-0. Leister’s shot deflected off the stick of an NU defender before slipping past Mesa.
“The second goal was just unlucky,” Didio said. “There’s nothing we could have done about that.”
Despite the bad break, the Cats didn’t give up.
After NU was awarded a penalty corner, freshman midfielder Christine Nannicelli deflected sophomore Candice Cooper’s shot into the net to cut the deficit in half with 29 seconds remaining.
The score was Nannicelli’s second of the year — the first coming in a 4-1 loss at Iowa last month.
“(The goal) doesn’t mean anything,” Nannicelli said. “When we end up losing at the end, it doesn’t matter who scored.”
The Cats suffered their third straight defeat — in three consecutive games against ranked teams — and have only managed to score twice in those losses.
But NU has made it close against Penn State and Iowa, matching the Hawkeyes’ shot total and keeping the Nittany Lions’ offensive juggernaut in check.
Close isn’t good enough anymore, though.
Didio was especially displeased with the lack of energy that NU — particularly the defense — showed at the game’s outset.
“It took a substitution and a timeout to get us on track,” she said. “And that’s crap.”
The rest of the team also regretted the bad start, as well as its inability to generate more offense.
“It just makes us mad because we had our share of opportunities,” Palin said. “Finishing chances are one thing that we have to work on.”
NU collected four penalty corners and had six shots, many of which came in the game’s closing moments.
With a little more than a minute remaining and the Cats attempting a corner, Cooper fired a shot that went just wide of the net. Moments later, another NU shot on goal was kicked away by Hawkeyes goalkeeper Barbara Weinberg.
Although the teams appeared to have played an evenly-matched game, the final score put a damper on the Cats’ effort.
“A loss is a loss,” Nannicelli said. “Being close just means that we were right there in a position to win, but it doesn’t matter to us.”
