Playing in front of what may have been its loudest home crowd of the season, the Illini suffered a heartbreaking 2-1 loss to Minnesota in a double overtime Big Ten thriller on Sunday.

The first half was a defensive affair, keeping the match scoreless and relatively uneventful through the first 45 minutes. The weather became a factor in between halves, however, and the players were greeted with a steady, chilling rain when they returned to the field.

“When the rain started coming, it made it a little harder to keep the ball because it was skipping and sliding and bouncing,” senior forward Jannelle Flaws said. “So it changed a little, but both teams were dealing with the same conditions.”

Five minutes into the cold and wet second half, Minnesota midfielder Josee Stiever netted the first goal of the game.

As the rain picked up, so did Illinois’ defensive pressure. The Illini allowed just two more shot attempts for the rest of the second half and mustered consistent scoring opportunities. Illinois’ steady attacking finally paid off when Minnesota was called for a hand ball in the box. Flaws handled the penalty kick with ease to tie the game at 1-1 with under three minutes left in regulation.

There were plenty of physical matchups across the field, but the most compelling battle may have come between last year’s Big Ten forward of the year, Flaws and the 2013 Big Ten goalkeeper of the year, Tarah Hobbs. Flaws asserted herself early on by applying pressure whenever Hobbs came off her line and took the upper hand in the matchup when she converted the penalty kick, her 15th goal of the season.

Neither team could find the back of the net in the last three minutes of the second half nor the first overtime, so the match came down to a second overtime. Minnesota caught Illinois off guard after the kick off and pushed up the field to score just 20 seconds into the match’s fourth period to steal a 2-1 victory.

“This one hurts because we fought so hard, and I wouldn’t say it was like we did all these things wrong, it’s just the bounces of the game,” head coach Janet Rayfield. “They like to go one versus one and serve balls into the box, and they managed to create two goals off of it.”

It was a hard-fought and very physical contest that led to some words being exchanged, plenty of collisions and shaken-up players, including sophomore defender Hope D’Addario who had to be carried off the field in the second half with an apparent leg injury.

Rayfield doesn’t attribute this loss to a lack of depth, though.

“We can play better,” she said. “Jannelle’s got to come and help us keep the ball more, we’ve got to make better passes, so there’s a combination of things, I can’t put it all on the fact that we don’t have players out there. We’ve got to rise the occasion and do things better than we did today.”

The Illini outshot the Golden Gophers 16-11, including a 7-4 advantage in shots on goal, but Minnesota was able to wear them down with its intensity and physicality that resulted in 20 fouls and three yellow cards.

“I think our effort was definitely there,” Flaws said. “We fought hard, we were there the whole 100 minutes, so it was a good effort. We just need to execute better.”

The Illini have lost three games in a row, their longest losing streak of the season, and are now 4-4-0 in Big Ten Play.

Joey can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @joeyfigueroa3.