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As I'm sure Herman will elaborate on, Northwestern women's lax won their quarterfinal game against Duke Saturday night, and that means the Wildcats will advance to their eighth straight women's lacrosse final four. Woo! We're at least No. 4!
The first thing that entails is a rematch of the last two national championship games with Maryland. As you may remember from last week, Maryland is our most bitter rival in any and all sports, and we hate them. So after the jump, I'll clue you in on all the details in this rivalry.
Rivalry
These teams have history together, having split the past two national championships.
Maryland hasn't won a national championship since beating the Wildcats in the 2010 final. That's 200% as long as it's been since Northwestern's last championship, which came in 2011. Although Maryland has ten national championship as opposed to Northwestern's six, all but one of these happened before 2005. Much as we agree anything before 1995 never happened in football, this is how we shall refer to pre-2005 women's lax happenings, as before that was the dark ages of Northwestern women's lacrosse. Therefore, the Terp's rings are stupid and we shouldn't pay attention to them.
Northwestern coach Kelly Amonte Hiller used to play for Maryland, and presumably loves her alma mater. However, this makes for a bad storyline, so instead we're going to pretend that she wanted a job at Maryland, but Maryland's AD - who, at the time, was a 70-year old misanthropic man overcome by bitterness and greed sitting in a deep leather chair in a dimly lit office - scoffed at Hiller, telling her that she would never amount to anything in this business before self-assuredly ashing his cigar and asking his assistant on the intercom to show Hiller out. Fueled by this rejection, Amonte Hiller has built Northwestern up to its status as a six-time national champion based nearly entirely on revenge.
Reasons to hate Maryland women's lacrosse that I totally didn't just make up
- As part of the Maryland women's lacrosse team's reign of terror on their campus, the University has instituted a rule that if a women's lacrosse player runs into someone wearing purple while on their way to practice, they are legally enabled to repeatedly ram that person in the crotch with the non-business end of their lacrosse stick, and the person can do nothing to defend themselves. Passers-by are mandated to stand and cheer and when the crotch-bashing is over, to laugh at the injured party.
- In a Spygate-esque move, Maryland head coach Cathy Reese has taken Northwestern head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller's strategy of having her husband on staff as a volunteer assistant coach. However, the lax hubby rivalry is even more dastardly than you thought: although a quick peek at Scott Hiller's NUsports page lists him as the GM of the Washington Bayhawks, a trip to the team's website actually reveals that Brian Reese has usurped him. We will not stand for this. Win for Scott, and screw the Washington Bayhawks.
- Part of the evidence found in Osama Bin Laden's lair was a correspondence between the late Bin Laden and Maryland women's lacrosse coaches on how to improve the Al Qaeda women's lacrosse team's efficiency on scoring off free position shots. "Although I generally despise America and women's empowerment, your glorious ball movement inspires all of us. It almost makes me want to say, 'Death to America, except for the women's lacrosse fields in College Park, Maryland'", Bin Laden said in a letter. "Almost."
- Maryland head coach Cathy Reese unsuccessfully petitioned the NCAA to allow her to sit in a revolving chair and creepily pet a hairless cat during play. On the matchup with Northwestern, Reese cackled and said "you know, we're not so different, you and I" before proceeding to tell reporters her evil scheme to beat Northwestern, which featured sharks with lasers attached to their heads.