Duke dropped its first game of the season Saturday, falling to No. 5 Maryland 19-18 in a game that came down to the end in College Park, Md.
No. 2 Duke (4-1, 0-1 in the ACC) never led in the contest, but the Blue Devils managed to tie the game with a little more than five minutes left following a 4-0 Maryland run that had brought its lead to 17-12.
Head coach Kerstin Kimel called a timeout after the Terrapins run, and the Blue Devils came out of the break and tallied five goals in less than four minutes to even the score at 17. Senior attacker Kristen Waagbo contributed two goals to the Duke onslaught, her fourth and fifth of the game.
"Kerstin said we needed to want the ball more than them," sophomore attacker Carolyn Davis said of the coach's words during the timeout. "We won almost all the draws after that and converted on a lot of them. We just started to execute the game plan that we hadn't in the first half."
The Terrapins (3-0, 2-0), however, responded in kind, calling a timeout of their own and returning to the field reinvigorated. Maryland notched two more goals to put it ahead 19-17 with just 47 seconds remaining.
The Blue Devils' Davis gained possession and drove to the cage and was fouled. On the subsequent free position shot, she scored her fourth goal of the game to bring Duke within one.
With 27 seconds left in the match, the Blue Devils won the draw and the ball ended up in Davis' stick yet again off a pass from Waagbo. As she headed to the goal, she was called for a charge and the Terrapins took control of the ball as time ran out.
One factor in Duke's loss was the loss of midfielder Rachel Sanford, who suffered an ankle injury 10 minutes into the game. Without Sanford-who is second on the team in draw controls-to take the face-offs, Duke was forced to alter its draw strategy.
"Having Rachel not out there is always going to hurt you because she's amazing on the draw," Davis said. "But [Caroline] Cryer and Allie [Johnson] really both stepped up in the second half and helped us win the draw."
Heading into halftime, the Blue Devils trailed by three and were looking for a spark heading into the break. Two goals in the period's final four minutes-the first from freshman Lindsay Gilbride followed by another from Waagbo off a Cryer assist-brought the score to 8-7.
But the Terrapins proved to be too much to handle in the second period and dealt Duke its first loss of the season. The game marked Maryland's first victory over Duke since 2003, as well as the most goals scored against Duke in the history of the program.
Up next, the Blue Devils face No. 4 Princeton Sunday at 1 p.m. at Koskinen Stadium.
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