Penn State women’s lacrosse holds off Northwestern rally

In a game of scoring runs, No. 5 Penn State had the most important one and held off No. 16 Northwestern at the end 14-13 Thursday night.

Katie O’Donnell’s five goals, Kelly Daggett’s four goals and two assists, and Madison Carter’s three goals and one assist led the Nittany Lions (14-1, 4-0 Big Ten). O’Donnell has 42 goals on the season and Carter has netted 51. Taylor Bleistein netted the other two Lion goals.

Cat Rainone made 11 saves to preserve the win as Penn State was outshot 37-24. It was just the third game all season in which the Lions were outshot.

Northwestern scored six of the game’s first seven goals, Penn State responded with a 5-1 run and had the game knotted 8-8 by halftime. The Nittany Lions scored four straight to open the second half before the Wildcats responded with their own 4-0 run to tie the game with 22:31 remaining.

O’Donnell then netted two straight scores, and Northwestern could only score one more the rest of the way.

Sheila Nesselbush’s three goals paced the Wildcats (7-7, 3-1).

Penn State has a week to prepare for its biggest game of the year to this point, hosting No. 1 Maryland at 7 p.m. next Thursday.

This story was originally published April 13, 2017 at 11:44 PM with the headline "Penn State women’s lacrosse holds off Northwestern rally."