Ahead of the NCAA Tournament, one women’s lacrosse team looks unbeatable

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Surrounded by her teammates in celebration, Chloe Humphrey just shrugged. She didn’t need to score the game’s final goal with 4.1 seconds left, but she did anyway, padding the Tar Heels’ lead just a bit while extinguishing any flicker of hope Boston College may have had with the flick of her stick.

North Carolina, seeded No. 1 in the ACC Women’s Lacrosse Tournament, led by a goal over the Eagles with 50 seconds to play in the title game at American Legion Memorial Stadium. Possession belonged to the Tar Heels after winning a draw after a late Boston College goal, and the objective in the game’s waning moments was to simply drain the clock and secure the win.

But Humphrey saw an opportunity. The 5-foot-4 attack from Darien, Connecticut ran toward the mouth of Boston College’s goal and faked her shot a few times. She then pivoted out of the crease and ran around the back of the net. She forced one defender to make chase and then drew in another as precious seconds ticked off the clock. She turned the corner to make her way around the goal again and pulled the Eagles’ keeper away from the cage. With her back to the goal now and three Boston College players trailing her, Humphrey turned her stick across her body and fired a shot behind her that met the back of the net.

As BC’s goalkeeper bent over in disappointment, Humphrey tossed her stick on the hot turf as her teammates thrusted their arms into the air and screamed.

Now, victory was certain. Humphrey had shut the door for good on Boston College.

“I just put the little cherry on top,” said Humphrey, a redshirt freshman. “I don’t know if I should have done that, but it was just so exciting that I wasn’t really thinking.”

Disregarding any concern about running up the score and simply trusting her instincts proved to be the right move. With less than five seconds to play, there was no way that the Eagles could muster two scores in such a limited amount of time. And so, for the first time since 2022 and for the eighth time overall, North Carolina won the ACC Women’s Lacrosse Tournament, defeating the reigning national champions for the second time this season 14-12 on a sunny Sunday in Charlotte.

Humphrey finished the game with three goals and two assists, and was named ACC Tournament MVP for her efforts. Her playmaking abilities helped the Tar Heels erase a two-goal deficit early in the fourth period.

“This team has heart, and you’ll see it end to end. We go down, but that doesn’t intimidate us. We know that we can just bounce right back,” Humphrey said. “It just comes down to our love for each other and our love for the team. And there’s never a doubt that we can accomplish the goals that we want.”

For the Tar Heels — the last remaining undefeated team in all of Division I women’s lacrosse — the next target on the horizon is winning a national championship. The bracket for the 29-team tournament will be unveiled on May 4 and UNC is widely expected to be the No. 1 overall seed.

Heading into the selection show and the tournament, the Tar Heels appear to be the overwhelming favorite to win the whole thing. After capturing the ACC title, North Carolina’s players are carrying confidence and swagger with them into the next chapter of the postseason.

“It’s not just what you see in these games, it’s what we see in practice, and that’s what makes me confident to say that we are the No. 1 team, because everyone comes to practice 100 percent and these games are kind of just showing off the hard work that we put in,” Humphrey said. “We definitely have our eyes on the bigger prize.”

The numbers tell the tale of just how good North Carolina is this season. Not only are they 18-0 with 11 wins over ranked opponents, but the Tar Heels are third nationally in scoring offense with 17.5 goals per game and first in defense by allowing just 6.67 goals per game.

UNC is also second nationally in assists per game (9.06), second in clearing percentage (.950), 18th in draw control percentage (.575), third in save percentage (.518), first in scoring margin (10.83), second in shots on-goal per game (27.28), and has the sixth-least turnovers per game (11.33).

Put more simply, the Tar Heels don’t have a weakness anywhere on the field or on their roster. In every facet of the game of lacrosse, Jenny Levy’s squad is superb.

Mitchell Northam / SB Nation

“We really are the best defense in the country. We always work together. We continue to support each other and give each other confidence,” junior defender Ellie Traggio says. “Our team this year is just so deep that our attackers who might not be starting are just as good as the other team’s starting attackers. We play against them every day.”

Traggio is part of a defensive unit for the Heels that has now held Boston College — the nation’s top offense — to its two lowest scoring totals of the season. The pair of defeats to UNC also mark BC’s only losses on the year.

Improvements on the defensive and offensive ends have helped the Tar Heels engineer a remarkable one-year turnaround. By the standards of UNC — and Levy, the only head coach the program has ever had — last season’s 10-7 mark was an incredible disappointment. After enduring injuries and losses, UNC fell in its opening games in both the ACC and NCAA tournaments, falling way short of what would have been the program’s 14th Final Four appearance.

“We had a tough year last year, and it’s great to be back in this game, playing a great opponent like BC and it’s great to come out with a win,” Levy said. “I think for us, our approach every day is just to try to get better on the things that we’re seeing in film and things that we can sharpen up… We’re just gonna play one game at a time and see what happens.”

From last season to this one, one big difference and major boost has been the presence of Humphrey. She was one of three key players — the others were All-American defender Brooklyn Walker-Welch and All-ACC attacker Marissa White — to miss the entire 2024 season due to ACL tears. Another All-ACC talent, midfielder Kaleigh Harden, was also ruled out for last season.

Humphrey’s debut had been highly anticipated because she had been tabbed as the No. 1 recruit in her class and the top high school player in the country by USA Lacrosse and USA Today while also earning a spot on the U20 national team. She also comes from a lacrosse family. Her mother played at Dartmouth, her sister Nicole won a national title at UNC in 2022, and her sister Ashley won back-to-back Pac-12 titles at Stanford before joining her in Chapel Hill as a transfer. Ashley — who set the NCAA single-season assist record at Stanford — has 70 dimes on the season for UNC.

When Chloe Humphrey finally put on the Carolina Blue this season, she didn’t disappoint. She ranks third nationally in goals scored with 73. She and her sister Ashley are tied for sixth in the nation in total points with 97 apiece.

Levy believes that Humphrey having a season of watching the college game up close from the sidelines has helped her become a star player this season.

“In high school, the defense is so interesting… It’s different at this level,” Levy says. “Not being able to play last year really helped her see what the game looks like at the college level.”

Mitchell Northam / SB Nation

What’s certain is that Humphrey is seeing the back of the net incredibly well, whether she’s firing from in the crease or from long range, or whether the cage is in front of her or behind her. With a playmaker like that, with a defense that is the best in the nation, with a wealth of depth and experience, and with a Hall of Fame coach on the sidelines, the sky seems to be the limit for the Tar Heels.

The Final Four this season is in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and there’s a good chance that UNC will meet Boston College on that stage for the third time this season. Should that matchup occur again — even in what would be enemy territory — the Tar Heels are convinced that the result will be the same.

“We’ve definitely thought about the possibility of playing them again. I think we’ve just learned that they’re such a good team, but we just continue to remind ourselves that we play against the best attackers in the country every single day. And so, we can do it — motivating each other, continuing to be dogs all over the field,” Traggio says. “We know we can do it twice, so we can do it a third time.”

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