“She’s a great goal scorer, and the team is putting her in good positions,” MSU head coach Tom Saxton said. “I say let’s keep it going.”

Hill has scored in all five games this season for the Spartans (4-0-1), and leads the team and Big Ten with seven goals – already five away from her 2008 total of 12.

A big reason for Hill’s quick start is last season’s success of sophomore Laura Heyboer, who broke out with 21 goals as a freshman. Because of last year’s numbers, teams have been focusing on Heyboer instead of Hill – who led the team in scoring in 2006 and 2007.

“Because she had such a phenomenal last year, the teams that haven’t really been able to see her – such as Illinois State – are going to man-mark her when they look at the stats,” Hill said of Heyboer. “She knows that, and I think the rest of our team knows that, so we’re just going to put the ball in the back of the net then.”

On Friday, it was Hill who took care of that.

In the 23rd minute, she took a long cross pass from junior forward Cara Freeman in front of the net. The ball became caught between her and the Illinois State goalkeeper as they converged, but as soon as the ball fell to the ground, Hill kicked it in the middle of a wide-open net.

Hill added her second goal at the 63:17 mark, taking a pass from Heyboer and beating the Redbirds’ goalkeeper to the lower right side of the net.

“The way they handled Heyboer with the man-marking made us have to change some things and make some decisions,” Saxton said. “We used the space that Laura created by dragging that player with her to open up Lo. That’s the luxury we have with two good forwards.”

The MSU defense and sophomore goalkeeper Jill Flietstra took care of the rest, posting the team’s fourth shutout of the season.

“We’re just trying to keep up with our offense,” sophomore defender Katelin Chaklos said. “They go hard every single game, so we do what we have to do back there. … Jill’s phenomenal. It’s a good feeling knowing she’s back there and you can act confidently knowing a counter attack is coming that we do have our strong two center backs back there and her.”

The Spartans out-shot the Redbirds 11-1, with seven of them coming from Hill. Flietstra had two saves.

Coming into Friday, Saxton knew the much taller Illinois State team was going to present a challenge for his players and create a physical game. The Redbirds did just that, but with three games remaining before the Spartans open Big Ten play against Penn State on Sept. 27, Chaklos said games like Friday’s will only help.

“I think it’s good for us. The Big Ten is known as one of the toughest, most aggressive conferences,” Chaklos said. “We’re excited to play teams that are going to give us a little bit of an edge and everything. Every team’s going to come out hard against us, which is just going to prepare us more and more for Big Ten.”