By Natalie Gussow and Lillian Paige
No. 1 Maryland field hockey came into Thursday night with its undefeated season on the line.
Maryland originally dominated, but its winning streak came to an end after a wild fourth-quarter comeback by No. 2 Northwestern.
The Wildcats quickly turned things around in the fourth quarter to secure the 4-2 win and force the Terps’ first defeat.
The first loss of the season for the Terps came during their best start since the 2018 season, when they lost in similar fashion to Penn State.
The Terps held Northwestern to just two shots after the first three quarters.
The Wildcats would then explode for eight shots in the fourth, and Northwestern’s Olivia Bent-Cole went on to score three against the Terps with two coming in the fourth quarter.
“The game is four quarters, we’ve been here before where we’ve just got to come back and make sure that we’re playing third quarter and fourth quarter,” head coach Missy Meharg said postgame.
A two-time First Team All-Big Ten winner, Bent-Cole’s three-goal performance is the first hat-trick the Terps have allowed all season.
Meharg had nothing but good things to say about the senior.
“I think she’s fast. I think she presses lights out. You know she can come up with the ball…you know she’s going to come up with it. She had beautiful shots into the corners,” said Meharg.
Maryland has boasted 91 corners this season, tacking on seven more against the Wildcats.
The Terps’ corners were proving to be successful in the first half; they went two-for-two with goals from Ella Beach and Jordyn Hollamon.
In rare form, though, their corner success would later diminish as the Terps went zero-for-five in the second half with multiple failed pass attempts.
Things continued to fall apart for Maryland as Northwestern’s momentum picked up.
Babs Van Hest was awarded Maryland’s first yellow card of the season for a trip in the third quarter, and with a player up, Northwestern scored less than two minutes later.
“We are a really good team. We fell away from that, so I would more say that Maryland kind of gave the game away a bit more than Northwestern,” Meharg said.
“Defense wins championships” is a common motto for the team, but the Terps struggled to show up on the defensive end in the second half.
Even with multiple big saves from Alyssa Klebasko in the fourth quarter, the Terps just could not come back.
The three-goal fourth quarter was the most goals allowed in a quarter for the Terps and the most goals allowed all season by Klebasko.
With only two games remaining in the season, the Terps look to bounce back into the win column in a top-15 matchup against Indiana on Sunday.
