Battling to a 1-1 tie through the opening two games, the Blue Devils took control of their match against Clemson Thursday night and won the final two games, both by counts of 30-20, for a 3-1 victory.
"We picked up our aggressiveness," sophomore setter Ali Hausfeld said. "We may have taken them for granted, but we were able to pick it up in the last two games."
The Blue Devils (14-6, 8-4 in the ACC), currently fifth in the ACC standings, headed into their matchup against ninth-place Clemson (9-11, 4-8) hoping to avenge their loss to the Tigers earlier this season while continuing their eight-game winning streak at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The first game was a hard-fought, back-and-forth battle. There were a total of eight lead changes and neither team ever had a lead of more than three points.
"We were playing in spurts," head coach Jolene Nagel said. "We weren't able to get any runs going. We were hurting ourselves with our own errors. We were not passing the ball as well as I would have liked us to."
Facing a game point at 29-27, Duke called a time out. Following the break, Hausfeld and freshman Jourdan Norman blocked a Tiger shot to cut Clemson's lead in half and extend the game.
The Blue Devils then won three consecutive points to take Game 1, 31-29. Senior outside-hitter Sarah Salem notched the game winner on one of her 16 kills.
"We had to be very aggressive," Nagel said. "We had to be disciplined on our blocks, which really turned it around right there. [We had to] control the ball when we had a chance to touch it."
Duke won the first three points of the second game. The Tigers rebounded, however, and topped the Blue Devils, 30-28, to knot the match at one game apiece.
With the match tied, Hausfeld, last week's ACC Player of the Week, tallied seven kills and 33 assists to lead the Blue Devils to their final two game victories. With 65 assists, 11 kills and 10 digs over the match's four games, the sophomore earned her third triple-double in the team's last five games.
Nagel said her team's improved serve game and mistake-free play helped Duke pull away from the Tigers.
"When we had the service, we were able to get our runs going," Nagel said. "We just eliminated our errors-our unforced errors, our service errors, our hitting errors and our reception errors-and then things could flow a lot better for us."
Duke will look to extend its nine-game home winning streak tonight against the ACC's third place team, Georgia Tech (13-7, 9-2).
The Blue Devils beat the Yellow Jackets, 3-1, in Atlanta Sept. 24 and will be going for their first season sweep of an ACC opponent.
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