Northwestern’s Sheila Nesselbush won a free-position shot just 11 seconds before halftime. On the whistle, she took a couple steps and fired the ball past Syracuse goalie Asa Goldstock. Nine seconds remained on the first-half clock. It was the third goal in less than three and a half minutes for NU.

Nesselbush’s goal put the Wildcats up one, a sharp turnaround from an early three-goal deficit, and just the turnaround NU needed.

“I thought we played really well,” SU head coach Gary Gait said. “We just didn’t score.”

Syracuse (6-4, 0-2 Atlantic Coast) knotted the game up to start the second half but eventually succumbed to the home Wildcats (7-3, 1-0 Big Ten), 14-10. Playing its second game in three days after losing at Notre Dame on Saturday, SU struggled on the draw and in the second half on Monday afternoon at Martin Stadium in Evanston, Illinois. The NU win brought it to 7-0 all-time at home against Syracuse.

The game began well for Syracuse. Before the game was seven minutes old, the Orange led 3-0. Sam Swart opened the scoring and Nicole Levy finished the next two. From 23:54 remaining in the first half, though, until 14:34 left in the second half, Northwestern went on a 10-1 run to take control of the game.

“We just didn’t finish on our opportunities,” Gait said. “We had 17 shots in the first half … We didn’t put the ball in the back of the net.”

Goldstock’s saves kept Syracuse in the game. But the times that she did give up goals, it was frequently Northwestern coming back again after winning the draw. For the game, the Wildcats won 18-of-26 draws, or 69.2 percent.

“We just keep trying to find the right mix and do the right things in practice,” Gait said of the draw. “It’s just a matter of finding some chemistry and getting it done.”

Nesselbush scored her first goal of five goals with 3:31 left in the first half to bring NU within one at 4-3. Then, Northwestern’s Taylor Pinzone won the ensuing draw. And at the 3:00 mark, it was NU’s Claire Quinn scoring to make it a tie game.

“We kind of gave them a couple to get them going,” Gait said. “An own goal, an interception with an empty net shot. That got them going.”

Five minutes after Levy tied the game early in the second half, Northwestern’s Shelby Fredericks won a draw and less than a minute later NU scored. Fredericks won the next draw, too, and 45 seconds later, the Wildcats had another goal. Syracuse won the following draw but couldn’t do anything before Northwestern scored again, won another draw and scored again. The score had ballooned to 10-5 in favor of the hosts with just over 15 minutes left.

Syracuse pushed back, multiple times getting within three goals but never closer. SU lost for the second time in three days on Monday. Two more games in the next five days await the Orange to break out of the slump.

“We get back to work,” Gait said. “We get a tough Princeton team at Princeton and they’re very good. We gotta mentally get prepared to play and show up and execute for a full 60 minutes.”

Published on March 26, 2018 at 5:23 pm

Contact Billy: wmheyen@syr.edu | @Wheyen3