​No elaborate intro this week, you all know what happened. What a Friday night in Evanston. This game was many things. It was the game to end a three-game winless run. It was the most impressive win in the Russell Payne era and his second ranked win in his last two attempts. It marked the first time that Northwestern took down a top five team in a decade, and simultaneously was Maryland’s worst regular season loss since the turn of the decade.None of those statistics really come close to doing it justice. I’m only a sophomore. Purely based on expectations going into the game, I don’t think it’s absurd to say this is the most impressive regular season win from any Northwestern team (lacrosse and field hockey excluded) since I’ve been on campus. When I wrote about this team’s schedule this season, I picked out games against high-level teams and labeled them “take the leap” matchups; games that no one really should expect the ’Cats to win except for the people in the building every single day. I picked out Michigan and No. 11 UCLA as the matches for that category.“A place near the top of the B1G standings is there for the taking, and teams of that caliber aren’t satisfied with just competing or narrowly losing these kinds of fixtures, they go into them expecting to win, I said. ”If the ’Cats want to place themselves amongst the heavy hitters of the conference, these games will be where they do it.”Even giving my most ambitious, optimistic look at the year ahead, I didn’t think this game was going to be a win. When Northwestern has never held a three goal lead over Maryland in any recorded game ever before this, you can understand why it’s hard to describe the feeling everyone had watching Ethan Nakolo perfectly place a header to make it 4-0 with more than twenty minutes left to play.  Forget about the approach, forget about the tactical setup, forget even about the actual objective performance that took place on the field. Put it to the side for just a little, it’ll get talked about later. This is a game that you feel before you analyze or think about. This is the game that makes everyone throw out those season previews I just made reference to. For as long as Payne stays as head coach of the ’Cats, he can look at his team, in whatever variation it may be in, and point to this game as a way of saying what is possible. On Friday in Evanston this team broke through whatever ceiling anyone had for them going into the year. The dream is that soon the standard will resemble this ceiling.But enough waxing lyrical, let’s talk about the on-field product now.Payne’s ApproachI don’t know if Payne is a poker man, but if he isn’t he should really take up the hobby because the entire game plan was centered around calling Maryland’s bluff. It mostly focused on the press. Against the Evansvilles and New Havens of the world NU can afford to be more unrelenting in its pursuit of the ball without truly being worried