The worst blown lead of the season

The Northwestern Wildcats Women’s Lacrosse team has had yet another strong season making it back to the NCAA Division 1 Women’s Lacrosse Tournament semifinals for the third straight year in a row. This veteran team had played a great season but needed a mental boost. After losing the last game of the season and being an early exit in the Big Ten Tournament they needed to return home to Evanston where they were undefeated this year. And they continued this dominant streak throughout the first three rounds of the tournament all at home in Evanston, Illinois. Knocking off Central Michigan, a very competitive University of Michigan team, then number 5 seeded Syracuse who they lost to last year in the semi finals. They really had no competition in these games beating their opponents by a score of 52 to 23. Then they met their superior, the number one seed North Carolina Tar Heels. The Tar Heels went into this game with a perfect season and they were going to bring everything they had at Northwestern to continue their perfect season. May I mention that these two top ranked seeds met earlier in the regular season with a 20 to 9 Tar Heel Victory in Chapel Hill on March 6th. Nearly 3 and a half months later Northwestern was looking for revenge. Northwestern ran ahead super early with a 6 to 0 lead at the end of the first quarter. Northwestern’s whole team was dominating the first quarter winning 4 out of 7 draw controls, holding the Tar Heels magnificent offense to only 4 shots and forcing the Tar Heels to turn the ball over 3 times. The 2nd quarter Northwestern lost some of its momentum, turning the ball over 5 times and allowing North Carolina 11 shots. Northwestern led at halftime 8 to 2. In the third quarter Northwestern came out with the fire again scoring 5 goals with only 5 shots on net. North Carolina also scored 4 goals and now the score was 13 to 6 going into the 4th. Up by seven goals you think Northwestern, the number 4 seed in the tournament, would be able to close out the game. People started to think that North Carolina's undefeated season might be in jeopardy but they refused to believe this. The 4th quarter was unbelievable. Northwestern turned the ball over 8 times and allowed North Carolina to take 15 shots, 12 of which were on goal. North Carolina scored 9 goals in 12 minutes to defeat Northwestern. Northwestern led by 8 points at one point during the game and the undefeated North Carolina Tar Heels never gave up and were able to punch their ticket to the NCAA Division 1 Women’s Lacrosse Tournament Finals. And then on Sunday May 29th North Carolina defeated Boston College in the finals. Winning its first title since 2016.