In the NCAA semifinals, nothing mattered but the moment.
If the world were determined by chalk and on-paper storylines, Northwestern lacrosse wasn’t supposed to pull off the improbable.
All season long, Northwestern’s identity was shaped just as much by what it lost compared to what it had. And even though the 2025 squad fought its way to the Final Four, the expectation was that the Wildcats would be the final domino to fall in a season-long collision course tailored toward a Boston College-North Carolina national championship game.
Boston College, the reigning national champions who defeated Northwestern in their last two meetings (including a 13-9 victory in Evanston this February), was the deeper, better on-paper team. In that world, the Eagles would come out victorious against the Wildcats.
But that’s not how the real world works. And when the clock struck zero in Gillette Stadium following the NCAA semifinals, it was the Wildcats who embraced each other in the pouring rain after overcoming an 11-6 deficit in the fourth quarter, defeating Boston College 12-11 and advancing to the national championship game.
“We knew that it was going to be very hard coming in here to Gillette being the underdog, not the home team,” Northwestern head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said. “We had talked about that, prepared for that mentally and just really tried to utilize that rather than to get us down. I think it just lit a fire inside of them.”
When Northwestern’s players rushed into the stands to embrace the only section of purple in a sea of mostly Boston College neon yellow, the moment was solely about them and what they did. Not about how they’d replace the production of the all-time greats of the past, or how they’d stop BC stars like Rachel Clark or Shea Dolce. To complete one of the greatest comebacks in program history, the Wildcats rewrote the script thrown in front of them.
That script consisted of Madison Taylor, beaming in her post-game interview after her four-goal, four-assist and six draw control performance. Yes, she’s had better showings statistically, but the way the offense ignited every time she touched the ball in arguably the biggest game of her tenure as Northwestern’s alpha dog can’t be replicated. After eliminating and outperforming Clark, Taylor essentially guaranteed that she’d finish the season as the NCAA Division I single-season goals record holder.
It consisted of Delaney Sweitzer, whose season ended in the hands of Boston College the past two years, saving Molly Driscoll’s final shot to conclude over a minute of failed clears from both teams. Of Sam Smith, who capitalized on the BC draw control weakness to help NU to a 19-8 advantage in the circle (6-1 in the fourth quarter) and then fired the go-ahead goal for the ‘Cats with 5:29 left in the fourth. Of Emerson Bohlig, who Smith praised for being a game-changer in the midfield. Of a team that couldn’t get anything going in the third while letting Boston College gain too much, but played the fourth quarter completely reinvented.
In that chalk world, Northwestern could have let the momentum of an early 4-1 advantage slip by with each turnover that led to a Boston College goal. But again, that’s not how this world works, and that’s not what the Wildcats are.
“We were just talking about loving the hard fight,” Taylor said. “We were down by a lot, and we said ‘this is right where we want to be,’ and we never stopped believing in each other and what this team could do, and we just fought to the very end.”
Northwestern has had its fair share of Final Four heartbreaks. The Wildcats blowing a 14-7 fourth-quarter lead to UNC in the 2022 semifinals, as well as a 6-0 lead to Boston College in the national title game just a year ago, come to mind. It was fitting that this year’s team, perhaps less defined by its past and its history than it’s ever been this decade, was the one to flip the script.
The team that overcame Boston College was one where five starters had zero experience playing on championship weekend, including players like Niki Miles and Riley Campbell, who scored two goals apiece, and a freshman like Mary Carroll, who tallied two ground balls and two caused turnovers. This is a squad that needed time to gel as a team after losing to the Eagles in February, but then put it together when it mattered more in the most erratic, unexpected way possible.
Even Amonte Hiller, who is usually deliberate and poised when she talks, entered her post-game press conference at a loss of words.
“I’m going to take a lot of deep breaths right now, that was quite a game,” Amonte Hiller said when she stepped into the interview room. “And I’m sitting in the Patriots press conference room and I’m from Hingham. This is pretty surreal, pretty exciting.”
“And so wow, it’s just, you know, so grateful to be here in the first place. And then what just happened, it’s just a spectacle of belief and heart. And I’m just really proud of my team today.”
But there’s still one piece of historical legacy attached to this Northwestern team, as well as every other squad that was and will be coached by Amonte Hiller. It’s that this team is a championship-level team, reaching the final game of the year for the third consecutive season.
That doesn’t change even with the Wildcats playing the undefeated No. 1 UNC, the ever-so-deep team that Amonte Hiller said had “weapons on weapons on weapons,” which blew out Florida 20-4 in its own semifinal game. Amonte Hiller has been in trophy-winning position before, and one should know better than to doubt whether she can pull it off again on Sunday.
Especially in a year when Northwestern refuses to be held down by expectations, anything can happen.
“We can still get better from [Friday],” Taylor said. “And I’m just super excited to be one of these two teams going into Sunday. Ad I just feel really grateful for two more days with this team.”