Northwestern coach Jenny Haigh said her team “can’t afford to have an off-day” this weekend.
Their opponent hasn’t had one yet.
No. 3 Penn State (10-0-0, 2-0-0 Big Ten) has defeated four top-20 programs this year and has owned the Big Ten since the middle of the second Clinton administration.
The Nittany Lions have seven- straight Big Ten Championships and have a 36-3-1 conference record in the last four years.
Forward Tiffany Weimer leads Penn State and stands eight goals away from tying Christie Welsh’s Big Ten record of 82 career goals. She shredded Indiana and Purdue’s defenses last weekend, scoring three goals in two games.
No player on Northwestern (7-2-1, 0-1-1) has ever won against Penn State.
“Yeah, Penn State might be No. 3 in the country,” midfielder Julie Lipinski said. “But we’ve got nothing to lose.”
The Cats said they’ve been working this week to sharpen up tactically for a chance at possibly earning a national ranking.
“This whole week our coach and everyone on our team has been saying how important this game is,” defender Laura Janowitsch said.
A big part of the NU gameplan will be focused on holding Weimer in check.
Weimer has scored in 10 straight games and is chasing Brandi Chastain’s NCAA-record mark of 15 straight games with a goal.
Janowitsch said the strategy for covering Weimer is not very different from the strategy NU employed in its 3-2 loss to Illinois, who also had dangerous strikers.
“We’re confident with our back line and what we’ve been doing this season,” she said. “If we need to make adjustments, it’ll probably be man-marking her.”
Coming off a loss and a tie in their first weekend of conference play, NU could gain momentum with a win or tie against the Nittany Lions heading into Sunday’s match against Minnesota (4-4-2, 1-1-0).
Lipinski said she is confident NU can hang with the Nittany Lions, even though Penn State historically has brought more talent to the field.
“We’ve prepared ourselves a lot more this year,” she said. “It’s more just a belief that we’re right there with Penn State.”
So how would it feel to do what no NU squad has done since 1998 and beat Penn State?
“It’d be huge for us,” Lipinski said. “Absolutely awesome.”
Pausing, she added, “I can’t even describe it.”
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