‘It really comes down to the team as a whole’: Northwestern’s Final Four mentality

Northwestern lacrosse is just two wins away from bringing home the program’s ninth national championship.

But the team’s talking like it’s just getting started with the regular season.

The Wildcats are fully aware that they are, in fact, kicking off the Final Four tomorrow. Yet the experience that five straight Final Fours has provided means that for a large chunk of the squad, it’s just another weekend.

“It definitely gives you a level of confidence going into it that you know what’s going to happen, you know what the environment is going to be like,” coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said Monday.

As if going back to the Final Four wasn’t enough deja vu for the team, championship weekend will be at the same site as last year’s. Cary, North Carolina will once again see hordes of lacrosse fans descend upon it, with the Wildcats are returning as well. But while most of the squad is familiar with this environment, that familiarity hasn’t created complacency.

“We’re just trying to live in the moment and enjoy it, not get too caught up on this and that from last year,” Izzy Scane said. “It’ll definitely bring back some good memories but gotta lock in and hope we can make some more good ones this year.”

For the entire team, the extra time spent together is the main draw of the Final Four. Much of this core — Scane, Erin Coykendall, Jane Hansen, Molly Laliberty, Dylan Amonte, Carleigh Mahoney, Kendall Halpern and many more — is done with collegiate lacrosse after this weekend. This awareness has created even more appreciation for this opportunity.

“That just makes us all the more excited to enjoy every second of it, to savor every moment that we have there,” Laliberty said.

Scane, too, has been focusing more on who she is playing with, rather than who she’s playing against.

“Just enjoying it to the best of our ability is kind of how we’re looking to approach it,” Scane said. “Just enjoy the moment and have fun with the girls that we love. I think we just try to focus back on the fact that we’ve got an extra week of practice with our best friends.”

And those practices have been fruitful all season long. Northwestern didn’t rise to the top spot in the rankings (again) by accident. For Scane, the first-team All-American and presumptive Tewaaraton Award favorite, practice has occasionally been more arduous than the actual games.

“We have girls that scout for us and play defense like the teams we’re gonna see, and they’re typically better than the D’s we end up seeing in games,” Scane said. “So when you get to show up to a practice and play with and against such incredible players, it really brings out the best in you. I think that’s part of why we’ve been able to be so successful so far, just how awesome the girls at practice are.”

For Hiller, practice is also useful for comfortability — but for tactics instead of gameplay.

“We’re just honestly excited to have another week of practice, excited to have another week together and really just be able to work hard...get our game plan going,” Hiller said. “We always have multiple looks ready so that if one thing’s not working, we can turn to something else. And I think our players are really confident at all the things we do, which I think gives us great versatility.”

That versatility is especially important in the Final Four, when the whole team must be at the top of its game. For Scane, the real hero of this run has not been the record-setting offense, but the Wildcats’ stifling defense.

“Our D has just done such an amazing job over the last couple of years...and I wish more credit would go to a group like that because they really are such an incredible group of girls,” Scane said. “It makes our job on offense easy when we know if it ends up going the other way, they’ll make a stop for us when we need them to.”

But it isn’t just the defense — the whole team has been stepping up in the postseason.

“There are different ways to win a game, but I think it really comes down to the team as a whole for those sort of things,” Laliberty said. “The defense doesn’t hold the team to four goals without a ton of draws, without clean play on attack, without goals from the attack, without smart decisions from the coaches, emotional control from the entire team.”

And the entire team is ready for the challenge of this weekend. While Hiller isn’t sure of the exact play style the Wildcats will utilize this weekend, she’s sure of one thing:

“I know that no matter what we do, it’ll be team-oriented.”

And all that team-oriented action will kick off today against Florida at 2 p.m. CT.