CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Selena Lasota scored five goals to etch her name in the NCAA record book Saturday in Northwestern’s quarterfinal showdown with North Carolina, but it was the goalie she faced all day, UNC’s Taylor Moreno, who pushed her team to championship weekend in Stony Brook, N.Y.

Moreno made 17 saves, tying a career high, as the Tar Heels topped Northwestern 19-14 to advance to their third championship weekend in four years. Moreno’s effort held the Wildcats to five goals below their recent average output. Northwestern had averaged close to 19 goals over the previous eight games, including 24 and 21 in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

UNC’s Jamie Ortega matched Lasota as the game’s high scorer with five goals, while Marie McCool and Ella Hazar both added three for the Tar Heels. For Northwestern, just one of Lasota’s five came in the second half, though that tally tied her for the all-time record for goals in an NCAA tournament at 22, matching former Wildcat Katrina Dowd. Danita Stroup and Holly Korn added two each for the Wildcats, but senior Sheila Nesselbaum, who came into the game with 61 goals, scored just once, late in the game.

For North Carolina, the return to championship weekend represented something of redemption, after being bounced in a home-field quarterfinal game a year ago by Navy, a loss Marie McCool said “shocked” the entire program. Navy was unranked and unseeded, while the Tar Heels were the defending national champion with a senior-heavy roster brimming with All-Americans.

That game, said McCool, was on her mind all week.

“I’ve been thinking about the feeling last year when we went down to Navy and definitely was motivating to me and everyone on our team,” she said. “We didn’t have a single day at practice this week where i thought, ‘Oh, we didn’t perform that well.’ We were locked in.”

Senior defender Naomi Lerner, who matched up against Lasota on Saturday, said last year’s team had looked past Navy. “Being in the elite eight, we completely took that game for granted and looked past it,” she said. “But this year I think we did a good job of staying focused.”

UNC slowly pulled away in the second half, slowing down possessions and opening up a lead as large as six. But a crux in the contest came in the last five minutes of the first half, with the Tar Heels up by just one. As Northwestern tried to tie the game, Moreno turned away three point-blank shots in two minutes, then made another last ditch save with three seconds to go in the half.

“It’s not just today. It’s not something we’re not used to,” North Carolina coach Jeny Levy said. “Taylor gives us a huge lift in the back. Making the one-on-none saves gives us the opportunity to build momentum and attack the other way. She’s a margin for us for sure.”

A goalie who makes a series of spectacular saves is sometimes said to be unconscious, a description Moreno appeared to validate after the game. When asked about the sequence, she began describing several goals she had allowed in. McCool interrupted her teammate to say she was being asked “about the ones you saved.” Moreno thought for a second, then shook her head and said simply, “I definitely blacked out on that.”

Whether Moreno remembered them or not, all three were strong plays by Northwestern. Beginning with five minutes remaining in the half, Moreno stuffed a point-blank shot by Megan Kinna after Lasota found her on a pass out of a double team, then stopped a Lindsey McKone shot who caught a perfect feed from Nesselbaum in front of the cage on a cut. She finished off the sequence stopping a free-position shot from Stroup.

All three of those saves, any of which would have tied the game at 9, came on a single Northwestern possession. But after Moreno’s third save, UNC gained possession and quickly scored twice — once by Ortega, then when Scottie Rose Growney scored her sixth goal of the season, firing over a defender.

But Moreno had one more big play left before the half. With just seconds left, Northwestern’s Megan Kinna beat her defender with a clear path toward Moreno and fired a low shot with three seconds to go. Moreno dropped — and that one she remembered.

“It hit the inside of my knee,” she said. “That was huge because one of the things that is always going through my head, especially in the last minute, is, ‘Don’t let them have the last goal.’ I feel like it’s such a momentum changer and going off a [defensive stop] or a save is one of the things that keeps us up on a pedestal going into the second half.”

With that save, North Carolina took a three-goal halftime lead it would not relinquish.