When Northwestern lacrosse departs for Boston on Wednesday morning to play in the Final Four, there will be fanfare. The band will play. Willie the Wildcat will cheer them on. There will be a ceremony to send the school’s most successful athletic program to a location where it can reach the pinnacle of college lacrosse for the ninth time in its history.
Following the send-off, the No. 3-seeded Wildcats (18-2, 8-0 Big Ten) will compete in their sixth consecutive Final Four and face No. 2-seeded Boston College, which beat NU in the national championship last year.
The ’Cats met the Eagles (19-2, 8-1 ACC) earlier this season in February at Ryan Fieldhouse, where Boston College emerged victorious. The Eagles grinded out a 13-9 win and handed the hosts their first home loss since 2020.
The Final Four matchup, held at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, is set for Friday at 4:30 p.m.
Here are three things you need to know heading into Friday’s bout.
1. Offensive matchup has a heavyweight feel
Junior attacker Madison Taylor leads the nation in goals with 105 this season, the NCAA single-season record. Boston College’s Rachel Clark trails just behind with 103. Both finalists for the Tewaaraton Award.
Friday’s matchup will pit the nation’s 2nd-ranked scoring offense in the Eagles against the 7th-best offensive output in the country, NU.
Boston College coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein’s squad boasts an attacking juggernaut replete with two elite scorers and one of the country’s most prolific feeders.
Between Clark and Emma LoPinto, who has punched in 76 goals on the season, the two have scored 179 goals. Factor in Mckenna Davis, who’s scored 25 goals and assisted on 75 others, and that’s a deadly trio.
“They have quite a lot of weapons, and they utilize those weapons well,” NU coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said. “We have to play together. We have to play team defense. No one person’s more important than the next, and what we do is most important.”
Meanwhile, on NU’s end, Taylor is always a threat. Her two outings in the NCAA Tournament have been nothing short of spectacular. She notched 10 goals — a tournament record — in the ’Cats’ second-round matchup with Michigan before posting a six-goal, four-assist performance against Penn in the quarterfinal.
The rest of the ’Cats squad have offensive firepower of their own right, guided by Taylor but supplemented with a wealth of attackers in the form of veterans and rookies.
NU has seen production from its graduate student attackers, Niki Miles and Riley Campbell, as well as from its group of underclassmen. Sophomore attacker Taylor Lapointe has come into her own this season and freshman attacker Aditi Foster has come through in clutch moments.
2. Defense wins championships?
Though the Eagles might have a slight advantage offensively, NU makes up for it with its defensive fortitude.
The ’Cats boast the nation’s third-best scoring defense, surrendering just 8.35 goals per game.
Graduate student defender Jane Hansen anchors the unit and leads the Big Ten in caused turnovers with 42. The sixth-year defender, who hails from Cohasset, Massachusetts, will play a humongous role in Friday’s game.
“(Hansen has) grown so much as a person and as a player in her time with us,” Amonte Hiller said. “She’s in a really good place where she understands who she is. She understands her strengths, and she’s really just going for it.”
Joining Hansen in the defensive area are freshman defender Mary Carroll, graduate student defender Grace Fujinaga and senior defender Sammy White. White earned a First-Team All-American mention, while Carroll was named to the Big Ten’s All-Freshman team.
Graduate student goalkeeper Delaney Sweitzer stands between the pipes. After missing the first two games of the season for undisclosed reasons, the Syracuse transfer has started every contest since.
“Sometimes, when our offense isn’t playing well, our defense will step up,” Amonte Hiller said. “When our defense isn’t playing well, our offense will step up. We’ve really been able to have each other’s backs, and that’s been a key for us this year.”
3. Setting the stage for next year
The focus remains on this year’s Final Four, but a year from now, NU will host the women’s lacrosse semifinals and championship on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Amonte Hiller said some of Northwestern’s athletic department is using this weekend’s event as a learning experience.
“A bunch of our staff members are coming down to Boston to see the operation and learn from it and get ready for next year,” she said.
Next year’s pinnacle will mark the first occasion that a Final Four and national championship are held outside of the Eastern time zone.
As the University began rebuilding Ryan Field, it constructed temporary seating at Martin Stadium in 2024. The interim venue can hold about 11,500 fans.
Though the focus remains on the weekend, a long-term goal of growing lacrosse in the Midwest will culminate in what Amonte Hiller hopes will be a packed house next season.
“I think there’s this idea that you can’t pack a crowd unless it’s on the East Coast,” Amonte Hiller said. “We hope to really dispel that idea.”
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