On Sunday, Northwestern provided a forceful response to its doubters.
Without senior Hilary Bowen, the team’s leading goal scorer, in the starting lineup for the first time in 70 games, many wondered how the Wildcats would react.
No. 1 NU (13-0, 2-0 ALC) answered, hammering Penn State 17-6. The Cats became the first team to win 50 consecutive home games and sent a message to the rest of the country.
“I think today was a great all-out battle,” senior Hannah Nielsen said. “We had a bunch of different goal scorers, different players stepped up, and we just started playing our game. We got contributions from everybody, and that was really good to see.”
To be exact, eight different players scored, highlighted by four-goal performances from juniors Danielle Spencer and Katrina Dowd.
Without Bowen, who was sidelined with a potential season-ending knee injury, NU struggled early in gaining possession. In 12 games this season, Bowen had notched 30 draw controls. No. 17 Penn State (6-7, 0-2) took advantage of her absence, winning the initial draw and scoring the first goal of the game off of a free position shot.
The Nittany Lions grabbed the next draw as well, and, after 33 seconds, Marisa Lozano buried a shot in the back of the net for Penn State’s second goal of the contest.
About five minutes later, Penn State’s Laura Lincicome fired a shot past goalie Morgan Lathrop, giving the Nittany Lions a 3-0 advantage.
“I think we just hadn’t really had the ball,” Spencer said of the Cats’ early deficit. “We just needed to get the ball and see what we could do on offense.”
While the Cats came into the game undefeated, they had been in this situation before. Last week against Duke, NU trailed 3-0 before going on a 6-2 run to end the first half, propelling its way to a 13-7 victory.
Down 3-0 on Sunday, Spencer took matters into her own hands. With just less than 18 minutes left in the first half, the junior charged through the heart of the Nittany Lions’ defense, slicing through several defenders to net her 39th goal of the season.
After Spencer’s statement goal, it was all NU.
Including Spencer’s goal, the Cats went on a 7-0 run in the final 17:39 of the half to take a 7-3 lead into intermission.
“Not having (Hilary), they didn’t really realize how they needed to step up,” coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said. “Once we went down 3-0, it kind of clicked in, and I was really proud of the way they responded.”
In the second half, it was more of the same for Spencer. Less than two minutes into the half, she tore through the defense and scored her second goal of the game.
Eight minutes later, Spencer was stuck in traffic but found senior Mary Kate Casey in front of the net for the Cats’ second score of the half.
Spencer picked up her third score of the game after a driving Nielsen found her curling around the defense just 73 seconds later.
Throughout the day, Spencer used her 6-foot-2 frame to terrorize the defense, accumulating six points on four goals and two assists.
Even though the Nittany Lions responded with two quick goals to end the Cats’ 10-0 run, NU dominated the last 18 minutes of the game, outscoring Penn State 7-1 for the final 17-6 margin.
“We definitely don’t want to ever be down, but in the long run it does help us,” Spencer said. “Learning how to come back from being down does help us prepare for better teams up ahead and tougher competition.”
While it was Spencer who rose to the occasion on Sunday in Bowen’s absence, the Cats’ depth allows them to turn to a number of different players.
“Obviously she’s a great player,” Nielsen said of Bowen. “But it’s great to see that we can still come out here and score a lot of goals. And different people can score goals on different looks, and we can still run out plays and we can still do what we do without Hilary.”
