West Lot Pirates

Are you ready? Because we sure are! The 2025 college football season is fast approaching so it is time for us to kick off our 15th season of Northwestern Football coverage. We start as we do every year with previews of the Big Ten teams that NU will not play this season. We start off with the defending National Champs OSU, Maryland, Rutgers and Wisconsin.

The 2025 Northwestern Spring Sports calendar closed with a huge flourish this year as the Women's Golf team won their very first National Championship with some incredible golf against the very best in the nation. Lacrosse also played for the title after a massive comeback against BC in the semifinal.

We are fully into postseason mode for Lacrosse and Softball. The Lake Show continues into the NCAA Quarterfinals with a definitive win over Michigan. Now only a date with Penn stands between them and the Final Four. Softball rode the wave of a monster series win at UCLA into the NCAA Tournament where they will head to Clemson for their regional.

It's three straight Big Ten Championships for NU Lacrosse with a couple of dramatic wins over Johns Hopkins and Maryland. Now they await their matchups in the NCAA Tournament as they look to head back to the top of the mountain. We also check in with Baseball and Softball as they both come down the stretch runs of their regular seasons and position themselves for their Big Ten Tourneys.

This week we sat down with NU Lacrosse Head Coach Kelly Amonte Hiller. We're fast approaching the tail end of the regular season and the Cats are firing on all cylinders. Coming up on April 17, they look to set an all time Lacrosse attendance record at Martin Stadium in a huge matchup with Michigan. We talked with Coach Amonte Hiller about this year's team, her career and much, much more.

It's a tradition unlike any other. As the NCAA Basketball tournament tips off, we welcome back Scott Sepich for our 15th annual Bracketology analysis.

As Northwestern Softball is poised to begin their home slate, we sit down with Head Coach Kate Drohan to talk about this year's team as well as some of her coaching philosophy and experiences.

It was Senior Night for the Men's Basketball team this week and it was a memorable one. The Cats made a furious comeback that came up just short after yet another questionable call by the officials. With just one game left in the regular season, the Cats look to punch their ticket to the Big Ten Tournament with a finale at Maryland.

As Lacrosse, Softball and Baseball are getting their seasons started, the Men's Basketball team comes off two very needed wins on the road. Tonight, we dive into all these topics and more.

Softball and Lacrosse have both begun their seasons with an impressive start. Softball went down to Florida and game back with an impressive win over #8 Duke and a 3-2 record. Lacrosse started off strong with convincing wins over Notre Dame and Canisius.

It's our milestone 600th episode! However, it's not all celebration as we need to digest the news that Brooks Barnhiser is out for the season and his Northwestern career is over. We take a look at what that will potentially mean for the Cats as they make their way down the stretch of the Big Ten schedule. We also have the start of the Lacrosse and Softball seasons this weekend so we check in on them as well.

With the Women's Lacrosse season just around the corner, we welcome in Yanyan Li, Managing Editor from InsideNU to catch us up with all the changes in the program. How do the Cats move on from Izzy Scane and Co. to flip the script from last season's disappointment in the Championship game?

Over the past two weeks, the Cats found themselves in two overtime situations, one positive, one negative and finished off with a great win over Indiana. Tonight, we look back at Nicky Buckets' game winning shot, Jalen Leach's ridiculous ejection and the Ty Berry 3 point show. We can also close the book on the 2024 college football season as Ohio State took home the National Championship.

It was a rough week for the Men's Basketball team. After a real physical game at Penn State where the free throw differential was immense, the Cats went down to West Lafayette where they ran into a Purdue squad shooting the lights out. On the bright side, we continue to see incredible returns from the Football transfer portal with some former Jackrabbits coming to Evanston to play for Zach Lujan again.

Happy New Year! We're back after our holiday break with some huge news from the transfer portal. QB Preston Stone tops the December class of incoming transfers and we're excited. We also react to the first two rounds of the CFP and look ahead a bit to the semifinals.

The beginning of December brings the annual mini-conference slate where the Cats went out to Iowa and hosted Illinois. Both games were incredibly close with the Cats taking the split. Now as they head into finals and the holidays, we see just a few more chances to tune up before the Big Ten meat grinder kicks into full gear. We also start to discuss the College Football Playoff and some of the surrounding stories.

Tonight, we sit down with new Northwestern AD Mark Jackson to discuss a wide range of topics: his background, the NIL landscape, the new Ryan Field and much much more.

Prior to the season, we sat down with Lauren Wadas to preview the Field Hockey season. With the magical season they had, culminating in the program's second National Championship, we simply had to have her back on to regale us with stories from their title run. We also look back at the Football team's 38-28 loss to Illinois at Wrigley Field and begin to look ahead to what may need to change in 2025.

Northwestern Field Hockey's magical season culminated with a dominant 5-0 win over St. Joe's to bring home the team's second National Championship. This week, we relive their championship run while also examining the state of the Football team after their 50-6 drubbing by Michigan.