Big Green Opens Season at No. 7 Northwestern and Michigan

GAME 1
No. 25 Dartmouth Big Green (0-0) vs.
No. 7 Northwestern Wildcats (1-0)
Date: Friday, Feb. 15, 2019 | 8:00 PM ET
Location: Ryan Fieldhouse | Evanston, Ill.
All-Time Series: Northwestern, 6-1 21-6-1
Last Meeting: 5.28.06 | L, 7-4 | Boston (NCAA National Championship Game)
Streak: 0-2
Live Stats | Live Stream

GAME 2
No. 25 Dartmouth Big Green (0-0) vs.
Michigan Wolverines (2-0)
Date: Sunday, Feb. 17, 2019 | 12:00 PM
Location: U-M Lacrosse Stadium | Ann Arbor, Mich.
All-Time Series: First Meeting
Last Meeting: N/A
Streak: N/A
Live Stats | Live Stream

THIS WEEKEND
The Dartmouth women's lacrosse team will finally get the 2019 season started Friday evening at No. 7 Northwestern before a Sunday matinee at Michigan.

LAST TIME OUT
•   When the opening draw control occurs Friday night in Evanston, Illinois, it will have been 288 days since the Big Green last played a meaningful game.
•   Dartmouth's 2018 campaign ended in Princeton, New Jersey, on May 4 and in the semifinals of the Ivy League Tournament. Second-seeded Penn defeated the third-seeded Big Green, 16-14, holding off a valiant second-half comeback bid.
•   The Green lost All-Ivy League First Team Attacker Ellie Carson to an injury early in the game, but still managed to find the offensive power to climb back from an early second-half 12-4 deficit.

SCOUTING NORTHWESTERN
•   The Wildcats were ranked seventh in the preseason polls, moving up to No. 6 this week in the Inside Lacrosse and Lacrosse Magazine rankings.
•   The jump in those two polls comes as the result of the team's 21-11 season-opening win against Louisville.
•   Nine players recorded multiple points in the win over the Cardinals with Selena Lasota's five-goal, six-point day leading the way. In three-plus seasons of collegiate lacrosse, Lasota has amassed 202 career goals, including a career high 70 last spring.
•   All three goalkeepers saw action in the opener with Julie Krupnick getting the lion's share, playing 46:31 and making five saves to earn the win.

AGAINST THE WILDCATS
•   Friday will mark the eighth all-time meeting between the programs with Northwestern holding a 6-1 edge.
•   The biggest of those six wins was the 2006 NCAA National Championship game played in Boston in which the Wildcats erased a 4-3 second-half Dartmouth lead to win, 7-4.
•   The two met in the national semifinals the year prior at Navy with Northwestern punching its ticket to the title game thanks to an 8-4 win.
•   Prior to that, the two had last played one another in 1990.

SCOUTING MICHIGAN
•   A relatively young program, Michigan began women's lacrosse in 2014.
•   This season, the Wolverines are already 2-0 thanks to a pair of wins in the Golden State, beating Cal, 15-10, and UC Davis, 17-5.
•   Senior Adriana Pendino leads the team with nine goals and 10 points. She scored six in the opener at Berkeley.
•   Michigan's next top point producers are Chandler Kirby and Lilly Grass with four each.
•   Mira Shane has started both games and earned the win in each, but Ali Kothari came in for 42:29 of the UC Davis game and posted strong numbers.

AGAINST THE WOLVERINES
•   Sunday marks the first-ever meeting between the two programs.

COACHING CONNECTIONS
•   There will be a wealth of connections between Dartmouth's Danielle Spencer — now in her third season — and her counterparts this weekend.
•   Spencer played at Northwestern under Kelly Amonte Hiller, winning three national titles with the Wildcats. She would go on to serve as an assistant coach under Amonte Hiller from 2012-16, helping to recruit several of the players currently on the Wildcats' roster.
•   At Michigan, Spencer will go up against her former teammate and fellow Northwestern alum as the Wolverines are led by Hannah Nielsen. The two won three national titles together while in Evanston. Nielsen replaced Spencer at Northwestern as an assistant in the 2017 season when Spencer had left to become the fourth coach in Dartmouth's then-44-year history.

BUILDING ON A RECORD
•   Senior and team captain Kathryn Giroux comes into her final season with 258 career draw controls, 103 more than any other player in program history.
•   Her 133 last season alone would rank fourth all-time, while the 108 from her sophomore season would be seventh.
•   Her 19 draws at Jacksonville on March 21 set a new Ivy and Dartmouth record and was the most by any player in the nation during the season.
•   The 16 against Penn in the semifinals of the Ivy League Tournament were not only a new standard for individual, but also were more than any team had ever recorded in an Ivy postseason game ever, besting the previous mark of 15.

OPENERS
Following last year's 17-13 loss at No. 18 UMass, Dartmouth dropped to 24-22 all-time in season-opening contests.

IF YOU THOUGHT THE LAST THREE YEARS WERE EARLY…
Each of the last three seasons have seen Dartmouth open the season on the earliest date in program history.
•   Three years ago, the team hosted UMass Lowell on Feb. 20, winning, 18-2.
•   In 2017, the Big Green and River Hawks once again played in the opener, this time on Feb. 18. That eclipsed the 2016 opener for the earliest in program history as Dartmouth held on for an 11-9 win.
•   The 2018 kicked off at UMass on Feb. 17 to once again become the earliest start.
•   2019 bests that figure by two days as the Northwestern game will take place indoors at Ryan Fieldhouse on Feb. 15.

THE STAFF
•   Spencer begins her third season on the Dartmouth sideline, a year removed from being named the 2018 Ivy League Co-Coach of the Year.
•   Nicole Flores is in her second season with the Big Green after joining the staff for the 2018 campaign.
•   Making her Dartmouth debut in 2019 is Megan Whittle. A standout and three-time All-American at Maryland, Whittle helped the Terps win national titles in 2015 and 2017.
•   In 90 games played over four seasons, Whittle amassed 339 career points in addition to her nearly 300 goals, both figures that rank near the top of the NCAA all-time record books.

WHAT'S AHEAD?
•   After the weekend in the Midwest, Dartmouth will cap its season-opening three-game homestand Sunday, Feb. 24 at Binghamton.
•   The team will open at Scully-Fahey Field on Tuesday, Feb. 26 against Preseason No. 1 and last season's national runner-up Boston College.

Schedules