Lacrosse: No. 3 Northwestern blows out No. 25 Colorado 20-5 in Friday night home showing

The Buffaloes had no answers for the Lake Show offense.

No. 2 Northwestern lacrosse (4-1, 0-0 B1G) picked up its fourth win of the 2025 season on Friday, taking down No. 25 Colorado (0-3, 0-0 Big 12) 20-5 in a victory that was dominated by the Wildcats from start to finish.

“A lot of improvement,” Northwestern head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller said of her team’s performance. “We’ve been trying to get better every game and just really meshing well together. I thought on both sides of the ball, we did a pretty good job of coming together and playing off each other.”

Junior Madison Taylor continued her hot start to the season with a tied career-high six goals and an assist, while graduate student Riley Campbell put up a hat trick and an assist. In her first career start, sophomore Taylor LaPointe recorded a goal and three assists.

Defensively, senior Samantha White led the way with four ground balls and two caused turnovers, while redshirt sophomore Jaylen Rosga had two ground balls and two caused turnovers. Graduate student Delaney Sweitzer made four saves with just two goals allowed between the pipes.

Nortwestern’s offensive dominance came despite the draw being relatively even. With Samantha Smith out and Madison Smith suffering an injury in the first quarter, senior Serafina DeMunno and graduate student Niki Miles took most of the draws. Colorado beat Northwestern 15-14 on the draw, but NU outshot them 30-13.

“I think our attackers did a great job of riding, our defense did a great job of coming up with possessions,” Amonte Hiller said. “You have to learn to win in a lot of different ways. You can’t just always depend on the draw, because sometimes it doesn’t go your way.”

Senior Jordan Miles opened up the scoring 50 seconds in after finding the back of the net off a feed from Campbell. Her goal kicked off a flurry of Northwestern scoring as the ‘Cats found themselves up 7-0 after 15 minutes. The longest Northwestern went without scoring in the first frame was five minutes and 30 seconds, a period where Colorado had several failed offensive runs and Sweitzer made three saves.

While Colorado’s Emily Dodd got the ball rolling for her team with a goal four minutes into the second quarter. Instead, Northwestern put up six more goals and prompted a running clock, going into halftime with a 12-1 advantage. Meanwhile, the defense forced a game-high eight turnovers from Colorado in that second quarter.

Junior Samantha White emphasized the NU defense’s zone coverage and transition play postgame as the reason why Colorado committed so many turnovers.

“We were able to make sure our sticks were in the passing lanes, which really helped us be able to get knock downs,” White said. “Sometimes we didn’t even have to touch the ball. We just kind of were in their face and they would throw the ball away. We really focused on ball pressure that zone D we have.”

“I don’t think people are always expecting us to run over the line and and to stay over the line. We all have a great mentality of we want to get the ball to someone, to get to the goal. If we’re able to push that transition, it doesn’t allow the defense to get set.”

The second half was a similar story to the first. Though Colorado’s Jaimey Hill put up a free position goal in the third quarter, Northwestern also scored four in the same period — including two ridiculous shots by senior Emerson Bohlig made from the eight-meter arc.

By the fourth quarter, Northwestern had emptied its bench, with both Francesca Argentieri and Cara Nugent getting time in goal. While Colorado scored three goals in this time frame, its highest-scoring quarter all game, it didn’t matter as NU ran away with a 20-5 victory. In total, nine different scorers contributed to the ‘Cats winning effort.

“You’re seeing the whole offense is producing, and the middies, so that’s a really exciting step for us,” Amonte Hiller said. “We just want to continue, any person has to be available, because we don’t know what [opponents] are going to give us. Whatever they give us, that person has to be ready to step up and convert.”

Northwestern will next travel to upstate New York to take on No. 4 Syrcause on Feb. 25, a matchup that will be its first road trip of the 2025 season.