STONY BROOK, N.Y. – Northwestern tried slowing the game down once, after scoring four straight goals to take a 6-4 lead. That tactic didn’t work: Syracuse stormed back to tie the game with 11:08 remaining.
After juniors Taylor Thornton and Erin Fitzgerald resorted to brute power, firing hard shots into the back of the net to help the Wildcats regain the lead, they fell back on an old strategy. This time, a slow-paced, possession-based offense worked to perfection, as they defeated the Orange, 8-6, to capture their seventh national championship in eight years.
“It’s a credit to our defense,” senior attacker Shannon Smith said. “They play a very high pressure (game) and we face that every day. They’re the most aggressive defense that we ever go against and if we can handle the high pressure from them chasing us, then that really makes us poised on offense.”
NU (21-2) held the ball for the bulk of Sunday’s game. The Cats’ possessions, which lasted for minutes at a time, was controversial – even after the final whistle had blown.
“Obviously, Northwestern wanted to make it a low-scoring game,” Syracuse coach Gary Gait said. “What they play for when they decide to play that style of game is they just need to be up by one or two and wait out the clock and it’s not great for TV, it’s not great for the growth of our game, but it is certainly a way to win championships.”
NU coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, in contrast, said that she wouldn’t categorize her team’s efforts as waiting out the clock.
“Our defense pressures out all year long, all game long,” Amonte Hiller said, “and I think that’s the best antidote to when someone tries to slow the game down a little bit and I wouldn’t necessarily categorize it as stalling.”
While NU’s ability to drain the clock dominated the postgame conversation, it originally appeared that the Cats would need all the time they could get after the Orange scored two goals in the first 3:20 of the game. Katie Webster led off the scoring for Syracuse (19-4) with a bounce shot and Amy Cross converted on a free-position opportunity to give the Orange an early two-goal lead. Their advantage could have been greater, if not for a few dazzling one-on-one saves by senior goalie Brianne LoManto. According to Gait, however, it wasn’t LoManto or the Cats’ goals that changed the course of Sunday’s game.
“That’s easy,” Gait said. “When you go back to the circle and the draw, it was nine to one in the first half of draw controls, right? So you go back and you got to have the ball to keep that momentum going. The last three quarters of that game, we didn’t touch the ball very often.”
Draw controls, which led to the debacle of NU’s ALC Tournament loss to Florida, were at the core of the Cats’ success on Sunday. Alyssa Leonard led the charge with a game-high six draw controls. In contrast, no Syracuse player finished with more than a single draw control.
“I really was upset after the Florida game. That was what I was most upset about was the draw control and I just feel like we have a tradition of very strong draws and I felt like I was failing the team in not giving enough coaching or inspiring them or whatever,” Amonte Hiller said. “Alyssa, she can talk about it, she really, I mean really took it to heart, and she was on a mission to get better and do better, and she’s so talented and I mean since that game, she has been unbelievable.”
Tightly guarded for the majority of the match, Smith led the Cats to victory with two goals and two assists. At first, she played the role of floor general, pacing the offense from behind the net and racking up two assists in the first half. On the first, with NU trailing 3-1, Smith dished the ball to junior attacker Erin Fitzgerald, who took a shot through several defenders into the left edge of the net. On the second, Smith lined up for a free-position opportunity with the Cats trailing by one. With the entire crowd anticipating a shot attempt from NU’s leading scorer, Smith dished it to freshman attacker Casey Bocklet, who came out from behind the net and put it away.
“She was wide open,” Smith said, laughing. “She had the much better shot than me. She was two steps away from the crease so there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to pass to her and I knew the goal was going to go in.”
Smith turned in a lethal shot of her own minutes later when she stopped and faked multiple times before firing a submarine shot from 15 yards out to give the Cats their first lead of the evening. After giving NU a 5-4 lead heading into the intermission, Smith expanded the lead 11 minutes into the second half. The senior attacker came out from behind the net, and with a defender draped over her, let a shot rip into the upper edges of the goal to give the Cats a 6-4 lead.
From then on, NU slowed down its attack, and Syracuse took advantage with a free-position goal by Alyssa Murray and an aggressive wraparound by Michelle Tumolo to knot the score at six. In contrast to the Cats’ slow, halting style behind the net, Tumolo darted behind the net and quickly put away the wraparound.
But the tie score would be short-lived. Little more than a minute later, Thornton fired home the eventual game-winner.
“I was just pretty poised,” Thornton said. “Once we got the ball, the idea was just to clear space and go to goal and I saw a good opening for my right hand and just went for it.”
Fitzgerald provided a measure of insurance, utilizing a couple of screens to get a clean shot on net. Her shot was picture-perfect, bouncing just before the goal line into the lower left corner of the net. With a two-goal lead and just 5:41 remaining, the Cats played the possession game to perfection to seal the victory.
While Sunday’s result was bitter for the Orange, Gait and multiple players made clear that they have a lot to be proud of after not even making the NCAA Tournament in 2011.
“It really is impressive and exciting that we got this far in our season,” Murray said. “Just moving forward, we’re just never forgetting this feeling and as badly as we all wanted to win today and as badly as we wanted to win it for our seniors, we have next year. We have a lot of people coming back and we have a lot of potential again. We have great recruits coming in and this isn’t the last you’ll see of us.”
For NU, a season scarred by two losses to conference foe Florida has once again been graced with a golden ending.
“I’m really proud of the team and how they came together from a low moment of losing the ALC Championship to really reevaluating ourselves and just working and coming together,” Amonte Hiller said. “This could not be a more proud moment. These girls, especially the ones sitting at this table (to speak with media), really looked inside themselves and were the heart and soul of what you saw this weekend.”
