Northwestern got three chances to defeat No. 10 Michigan State, matching up with the Spartans three weeks in a row.
However, the third time wasn’t the charm for the Wildcats on Thursday morning, while at the same time this loss ended their season.
The Cats (11-9, 3-3 Big Ten) fell to Michigan State (15-4, 3-3), losing 3-1 in the opening round of the Big Ten Tournament.
The game saw very few scoring opportunities as the teams combined for a total of 13 shots the entire game. The Cats alone had 17 shots in Sunday’s loss to the Spartans.
The first tally came seven minutes into the contest as Michigan State forward Jantine Steinmetz slapped one past sophomore goalie Amanda Wirth off a pass in front by Kristen Henn. The Spartans struck again when forward Camille Dagorn tapped home a goal off a long cross by Steinmetz from the corner.
Despite trailing 2-0 on the scoreboard, NU led 4-3 in shots and had both penalty corners of the half. Coach Tracey Fuchs said both teams played well below the 25-yard lines.
“It’s really a good thing we didn’t give up a lot of penalty corners,” she said.
Freshman forward Nikki Parsley scored the lone goal for the Cats off of a penalty stroke about 10 minutes into the second half, but the half did not see much more offense as the game continued to be played between the 25s.
“Today was really more of a midfield game,” Fuchs said. “We got a lot of circle penetration but not a lot of shots.”
The Spartans iced the game with three minutes left as midfielder Sabine van den Assem scored off a penalty corner into the empty net.
The Spartans advance to play the top seed and No. 5 Ohio State, while NU starts working toward next year and thinking about what could have been.
The Cats hit the road early in the season, including trips to No. 7 Syracuse and No. 3 Virginia, dropping both contests. After splitting their first six games, NU went on a tear, winning seven of their next eight to get their record up to 10-4.
However, as the Cats hit the home stretch of their season and drifted into Big Ten play, the team could not find a way to win, losing four of their last five regular season games to finish at 11-8.
Sophomore midfielder Chelsea Armstrong, who was named the Big Ten’s Offensive Player of the Year on Thursday, once again paced the Cats this season with 24 goals and 60 points. Those totals also led the conference and brought Armstrong within 13 goals and 23 points from becoming the all-time leader at NU in those categories.
On a team level, the Cats finished second in the Big Ten with 3.2 goals per game but finished sixth out of seven teams by giving up 2.1 goals a game.
“Right now, we are just going to celebrate our eight seniors,” Fuchs said. “Then we will start to work hard in the spring. We have a lot of talented freshman, and a player can improve 20 to 30 percent in one spring.”
