WASHINGTON, D.C. - Duke went into halftime of Saturday's game against Georgetown with momentum on its side, after Matt Danowski scored Duke's fifth conseuctive goal with two seconds left in the second quarter.
But instead of expanding upon that 5-3 lead after the break, No. 1 Duke came out flat and No. 10 Georgetown took advantage.
The Hoyas (4-2) scored five of the next six goals en route to an 11-7 win, the first loss of the season for No. 1 Duke (8-1). In the Blue Devils' only game decided by five goals or fewer, they failed to score 15 goals or more for the first time all season.
After outscoring the Hoyas 4-0 on 13 shots in the second quarter, Duke managed just two goals on the same number of shots in the entire second half.
"We didn't come out in the second half-we felt like it was going to continue," head coach John Danowski said. "If we learn anything, we've got to learn how to come out of the locker room at halftime and continue to play the same way. We made some uncharacteristic bad decisions in between the lines, and that ended up hurting us."
Duke was pleased with the tempo in the first half. After the break, however, the Blue Devils struggled to get into the fast-paced transition game on which they have thrived this season.
"We got frustrated at the fact that we weren't running up and down and having fun," attackman Max Quinzani said. "We didn't get, like, the cool goals, the ones where Zack [Greer] streaks and then we throw a bomb to him and stuff like that. It took a little of the excitement out of the game, and when that happens, we're not ourselves."
Quinzani, Duke's leading scorer, posted three goals, the first two on backdoor cuts streaking toward the cage. The last one pushed Duke's lead to 4-3 as the sophomore split two defenders, spun and flipped the ball past Georgetown goalie Miles Kass into the lower corner.
But Quinzani, like his teammates, struggled in the second half. He didn't score after the goal that gave Duke its first lead.
He was also charged with two penalties in a half that Duke spent a lot of time man-down. Matt Danowski was whistled for an illegal stick to start the fourth quarter, a three-minute penalty on which Georgetown capitalized to take a 7-6 lead that it never relinquished.
Quinzani also picked up a penalty in the fourth quarter, forcing the Blue Devils to spend four minutes man-down in the period. Duke has struggled on man-down situations all season, Danowski said, and it forced the team to have a limited number of possessions. That forced the Blue Devils to press too much when they got the ball, feeling as though they had to score on every possession that they got, Quinzani said.
Even so, Duke did not want to use the penalties as an excuse for failing to put away the Hoyas.
"It hurts, but we practiced man-down a lot this week," senior Brad Ross said. "It's not an excuse. We just threw the ball around today. We weren't ourselves."
The Blue Devils' mistakes came back to haunt them. Danowski said the team did not follow the game plan that has allowed it to be successful so far this season. He credited Georgetown for forcing Duke into those mistakes, but the Blue Devils learned that there are some things they need to work on going forward.
"Now we're not kings of the hill-we're a part of the pack," Quinzani said. "When [stuff] doesn't go our way, we need to calm down, look each other in the eye and be like, whatever, and we'll play six-on-six.... We need to buckle down and take a deep breath sometimes."
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