No. 6 Northwestern stood tied with DePaul entering the final minute of regulation.
Sophomore defender Mark Blades took a last-ditch free kick into the box. The ball found the foot of freshman midfielder Jack Hillgard. Hillgard chipped it over the defense and to senior defender Matt Witt.
Witt kicked the ball into the back of the net as time expired. He ran across the field and into the stands, celebrating his first career goal with his parents and fans, as the Wildcats pulled off a 2-1 victory over the Blue Demons at Lakeside Field.
“Hopefully, I’m able to help the team out more in that way,” Witt said. “It was a great feeling to get the first goal during the regular season and to have it be the game winner makes it more special. We haven’t scored a lot of set-piece goals and that’s kind of the area where the defenders get in. Just to get that goal was really important to me and the team.”
DePaul (6-4-0) possessed the ball and kept NU (9-1-1) from attacking for most of the game. But the Blue Demons could not convert their advantage into goals.
Their defense kept the Cats from getting many opportunities at the net.
“(The Blue Demons) really open you up and possess the ball,” Lenahan said. “What you have to do to combat that is you have to counter-attack. I don’t think we had our A-game in the final third today in terms of being able to connect passes.”
NU was also lost one of its best defenders early in the game.
Junior defender Drew Ratner left the game in the 11th minute with a concussion after a hard collision. He is day-to-day.
Junior defender Geoff Fallon, junior defender Brian Usinger and Hillgard filled in and kept the NU defense going without Ratner in the game.
“Drew is one of our captains,” junior midfielder Tyler Voigt said. “It’s definitely painful, but Jack (Hillgard) filled in great and we didn’t miss a beat without him because Jack played really well. So we stepped up.”
The Cats got on the board first in the 13th minute. Senior midfielder David Roth fed freshman forward Matt Eliason in the box, who shot the ball past goalkeeper Brian Visser.
But DePaul tied the match 10 minutes later.
Midfielder Julian Chille collected the ball off a deflection and passed it back to midfielder John Kornfeld, who blasted it into the back of the net from the top of the box.
NU had opportunities late in the game to avoid the buzzer beater.
With just fewer than 10 minutes left, the Cats earned three consecutive corner kicks, but couldn’t capitalize.
In the last minute, Blades crossed the ball into the box. Voigt headed the ball back to Eliason who shot it. Visser just got a touch on the ball and forced it out of bounds.
But in NU’s last chance to score, the team found a way to grind out a victory.
Lenahan said the cooler temperatures and the wind also forced the team to adjust with the wind against them.
“We had such great games with nice weather,” Lenahan said. “You’ve got to grind it out when it’s like this and take advantage when you have the wind. We scored a goal against the wind in the first half. They earned that goal that they score. But we found a way to get a result and sometimes, in good years, you get these results.”
Reach Philip Rossman-Reich at [email protected].
