For the second straight year, the top-ranked Wildcats’ last road game of the regular season proved to be their toughest test of the regular season.
Last season, Pennsylvania tripped up Northwestern and handed the Cats their first and only loss. No. 10 Virginia tried to duplicate that feat on Sunday, giving the four-time defending national champions all they could handle.
But this time, Hannah Nielsen ensured there would be a happy ending.
The senior midfielder scored to break a 10-10 tie with 91 seconds left, clinching the Cats’ 11-10 win. It was the closest margin of victory for NU (15-0, 3-0 ALC) since besting Duke by an identical score in the national semifinals almost three years ago.
Nothing came easily against the Cavaliers (10-6). But for the Cats, a team that had not won a game by fewer than five goals, that was not necessarily such a bad thing.
“It’s very positive that we played in a game like this,” said Nielsen, who became the Cats’ all-time points leader in Friday’s 16-7 conference win over Johns Hopkins (5-10, 0-3). “Even though we only won by one goal, it’s very beneficial for us to play in a close game where we have to come up with a win under pressure.”
It looked like the Cats might run away with the game early after finding the back of the net twice in the first four minutes.
Then the offense went silent, and Virginia took advantage. The Cavaliers scored six of the next seven goals, putting the Cats in as big of a hole as they have faced all season.
“Virginia is a hustling team, and they were beating us to draws and ground balls,” said junior midfielder Katrina Dowd, who scored eight goals in the two weekend games. “That really gave them the momentum.”
Coach Kelly Amonte Hiller called a timeout after the Cavaliers’ sixth goal to rally her troops.
“I just told them that every single player on that team needed to make big plays and they couldn’t just rely on one or two people,” she said. “Once we went out and started to do that, we played really well.”
NU’s attack responded, snapping out of its slump and going on a 4-0 run to take a 7-6 lead into intermission. The Cats have still not trailed at the half this year.
Virginia broke through first after the break, and the two teams went back and forth until senior Meghan Plunkett and freshman Alexandra Frank scored consecutively to give NU a 10-8 advantage with 20 minutes remaining.
In tight contests against Duke and North Carolina, Amonte Hiller’s squad strung together six goals in a row to put those games out of reach. There was no such scoring spurt on Sunday, mainly because the Cats had nearly as many turnovers (16) as shots (17, a season low).
“In the second half, we gained control of the game, but we just had too many unforced turnovers, and that really cost us,” Amonte Hiller said.
Virginia’s methodical approach on offense kept NU from getting into a rhythm.
By milking their possessions, the Cavaliers were able to wait for ideal scoring opportunities and limit the Cats’ number of offensive chances.
“They always know how to play us well,” Nielsen said. “Their attack was playing the possession game and really wearing our defense down. They weren’t shooting until they had options.”
As a result, Virginia was the first team to out-shoot NU this year.
The Cats’ lack of aggression was the source of some of their struggles against the Cavaliers’ stingy defense.
“They were tight in the middle,” Nielsen said. “The cuts weren’t as open as they have been in the past. In the second half, the few goals that we did get came off of someone charging hard and passing it to someone in the middle or going (to the) goal. They’re a good defensive team if you don’t take it to them.”
With just less than five minutes to go in regulation, goalie Morgan Lathrop caused a turnover and gave NU the ball for a possible final shot.
What happened next was almost like déj
