Nicole's NCAA Notebook: March 16, 2026

• There are just three games left in the season, which seriously has me mind blown.
• I was really impressed with Jill Hertl in FPU's regional semifinal on Thursday. I hve called her out a bunch throughout her career and she lived up to that until the very last second of her college career.
• For all I complain about what it takes for a regular fan to watch NCAA games from different conferences, I don't take for granted that I get media access and get to watch a lot. But every time I see teams in person I'm reminded how limiting it is to understanding a team or an individual player if you only see them on a stream. So much happens before or after the play that you just don't get on a stationary camera set back from the rink.
• Northeastern's Lisa Jönsson made a case for why it was silly to leave her out of the top-three for Goalie of the Year.
• Wisconsin made adjustments and looked eons more like the defending national champion than they did against OSU in the WCHA title game.
• Minnesota Duluth went out with a whimper. I've been talking for most of the season about their inability to score, but even I didn't think they'd lose 1-0 in the regional semifinal. They have been shut out in each of their last four NCAA Tournament exits. If you remove their win over Sacred Heart, they've scored just three goals in their last six NCAA tournament games. (Those stats from Todd Milewski and Matt Wellens respectively).
• When Penn Satte scored early, I thought Connecticut had plenty of time to equalize. Kudos to Katie DeSa and the Penn State defense, but I also think UConn has to spend some time working on picking their shots and taking more deliberate shots. They were in that game until a late mistake, but I'm also not sure they were ever much of an offensive threat.
• I was overall a little disappointed in the attendance at this week's games. I was hoping we'd see more folks at Penn State with what was on the line for the home team.
• We all knew there would be unknowns and growing pains coming out of this year in terms of what effects the Olympics will have, but it feels like the Gophers got the worst of it all. That team never came back together when their Olympians returned, leading to a disappointing playoff run. A few teams talked about the difficulty of finding the chemistry again and I feel like for all the things we talked about that teams would have to deal with, that's one hurdle we didn't consider.
• I can't stop thinking about what a difference four years has made at Penn State. It's not just Tessa Janecke herself, but the Tessa effect has really taken this from a team unranked last time they hosted the Frozen Four to going in third in the country. It truly shows the trickle-down effect one player can have.
• Goals of the week:

Quinnipiac's Emerson Jarvis made SportsCenter Top 10 with this goal on Thursday

Morgan Jackson snuck behind the whole defense to score this one for Northeastern

Jordan Baxter's wraparound goal for Ohio State

This snipe from Wisconsin's Adéla Šapovalivová

A great shot/pass from Nicole Hall and a gorgeous redirect from Matilde Fantin for Penn State

Still not sure how UConn's Kyla Josifovic scored from there

Nor can I believe how Riley Sorokan pulled this back in front of the net to score for Princeton

Molly Boyle's shot from the blue line that won the regional semifinal for Yale