NCAA First Round: Northwestern, Maryland and Harvard Cruise Through, Duke and UConn Need Overtime

Eight games, eight winners, and not a single upset. Friday’s NCAA Division I first round went almost entirely to script, but the two games that didn’t follow it gave us the night’s best hockey.

Defending champions Northwestern were ruthless, Princeton were ruthless, Maryland were ruthless. Harvard took an hour to get going and then scored four. The drama came in College Park and Storrs, where Duke and UConn both needed overtime to stay alive. Sunday’s second round is now set, and it’s a proper card: four ties, four campus sites, four places in Louisville on the line.

Evanston: Northwestern 5-0 Saint Joseph’s, UNC 1-0 Miami

Northwestern don’t do slow starts in November. Ashley Sessa had the top seeds ahead inside three minutes at Lakeside Field, and by half-time it was 4-0 and done. Sessa scored twice, Bree Moffett put away a rebound off a corner, and first-year Raquel Hofmeister scored in the final minute of the second quarter on her NCAA debut. Laura Salamanca added the fifth late on.

That’s nine straight NCAA Tournament wins for the Wildcats, a run that started in 2024, and a sixth straight first-round win. Saint Joseph’s, Atlantic 10 champions for a sixth year running, finish 12-10. They’d beaten Vermont in the opening round on Wednesday to get here, and they’d lost the 2024 final to these same Wildcats. No shame in it. Northwestern are just a different animal in this tournament.

Waiting for them on Sunday are North Carolina, who ground out a 1-0 win over Miami of Ohio in the late game at Evanston. Mendez got the only goal, and the Tar Heels held on. It’s their 24th straight NCAA appearance, which tells you everything about the programme, and now they get the rematch with the champions. Northwestern beat them in last year’s semi-final. Sunday, 2pm ET in Evanston, is the tie of the round for our money.

Storrs: Princeton 4-0 Syracuse, UConn 2-1 Lafayette (OT)

Princeton have a thing about Syracuse. Or rather, Syracuse have a thing about Princeton. The Tigers rolled past the Orange 4-0 at Nancy Stevens Field, with first-half goals from Ottilie Sykes and Lydia Bills and two more after the break from Molly Nye. Freshman goalkeeper Josie Bianco made two saves in her first career start and kept a clean sheet.

That’s a third straight quarter-final for Princeton, last year’s runners-up. They’ll need to be better than this on Sunday, though, because waiting for them are the hosts. UConn needed overtime and a 72nd-minute winner from Abby Davidson to see off Lafayette 2-1, and the Leopards made them work for every inch of it.

Marlijn Swaan gave UConn the lead from a penalty corner at 43:52, and 35 seconds later Lafayette were level, Laila Pasic finishing off a corner sequence of their own. UConn threw everything at it in overtime, 18 shots to Lafayette’s five on the night, and Davidson finally broke through at 72:32 in the second overtime period. Lafayette’s eight-game winning streak is over, and a programme-best 17-2 season ends in Storrs. Princeton lost a shootout to UConn in Storrs earlier this season, so Sunday’s rematch has an edge to it already.

College Park: Maryland 8-1 Wagner, Duke 3-2 Iowa (OT)

Maryland didn’t so much win their first-round tie as demolish it. Forty-six seconds in, Francisca Eschoyez buried a penalty corner. By the end of the first quarter it was 5-0, the fifth arriving right on the buzzer. Six by half-time, eight by the end. Maddie Vasilios converted a corner to make it 3-0, and the Terps never took their foot off.

It’s Maryland’s first NCAA Tournament win since 2023, and they look like a side in a hurry to make up for lost time. Wagner’s week still counts for plenty. The Seahawks won their first-ever NCAA game on Wednesday, 1-0 over Fairfield, and arrived in College Park as NEC champions playing with house money. They got one back, but this was never a contest.

The game of the night in College Park was the late one. Duke and Iowa went at each other for 64 minutes and couldn’t be separated in regulation. Ashley Stockdale scored twice for Duke, at 3:08 and 36:17, and both times Iowa hit back, Fréderique van Cleef levelling for her 20th goal of the season and Meg Tebben tying it again at 2-2 in the 41st minute. Then, five minutes into overtime, Madison Beach picked the ball up near halfway, beat three Hawkeyes and ripped it into the far post.

Duke are through to the quarter-finals for a fourth straight season. Iowa are out for a second year running at Duke’s hands, and that’s a brutal way to end a 13-6 season. For our money, Duke against this Maryland side on Sunday is the hardest tie of the four to call.

Cambridge: Harvard 4-0 Old Dominion, UMass 1-0 Yale

Harvard made their fans wait. Old Dominion, the Big East champions, held the No. 3 seeds scoreless for the best part of an hour at Berylson Field, and for a while it looked like the upset of the round was on. Then Emily Bronckers stepped up to a penalty corner and fired low into the net, and the floodgates opened. Sage Piekarski struck twice late, both into an empty net after ODU pulled their keeper, and Harvard ran out 4-0 winners.

The Monarchs’ fairytale week is over, but what a week. They beat Liberty and then stunned UConn to win their first Big East title since 2023. They finish 15-5. Harvard are 16-2 and into the second round for a fourth straight year.

Their opponents on Sunday are UMass, who ended Yale’s season 1-0 in the other Cambridge tie. Elani Sherwood did it on her own, dribbling through the Yale defence and sliding a backhand past Amelie Schwarzkopf in the 27th minute. Yale had nine corners to UMass’s two and outshot the Minutewomen 11-9, but Rozárie Mrázová made eight saves and kept UMass’s 12th shutout of the season.

Yale finish 14-4 with the programme’s first Ivy League Tournament title and the second-most wins in school history. That’s a season to be proud of. UMass are 19-2, have outscored opponents 96-12 this season, and already beat Harvard 3-1 earlier in the campaign. Sunday at Berylson is a rematch, and Harvard will know exactly what’s coming.

Sunday’s second round (all times PKT)

• College Park, 11:00pm: No. 2 Maryland v Duke
• Cambridge, 11:00pm: No. 3 Harvard v UMass
• Storrs, 11:00pm: No. 4 UConn v No. 5 Princeton
• Evanston, midnight: No. 1 Northwestern v No. 8 North Carolina

Four winners go to Trager Stadium in Louisville for the semifinals on Friday 20 November and the championship game on Sunday 22 November. After Friday, the smart money is still on Northwestern. But Duke and UConn both showed that nobody in this field is going quietly, and Sunday has at least two ties that could go either way.