The Blue Devils kicked off their season this weekend with a pair of games against top-10 opponents, both of which took place in Bloomington, Ind., and both of which ended in Duke losses.
And yet the contests couldn't have been more different.
After a closely contested 2-1 defeat against Indiana Friday in head coach John Kerr's first game on the Blue Devil sidelines, Duke came out flat Sunday and fell to No. 3 Notre Dame, 4-1.
"Friday we came out and played well, and we set the bar high," senior captain Darrius Barnes said. "We deserved a tie, if not a win, on Friday, but sometimes that's how the game plays out.... [But] to come out [Sunday] and not perform as well, it just kind of puts a damper on the weekend."
The Blue Devils (0-2) fell into a 2-0 hole at the break against the Fighting Irish (1-1), and despite a halftime goalkeeper switch, Duke couldn't climb back into the game. Notre Dame knocked two more past freshman Jan Trnka-Amrhein before Mike Grella finally put the Blue Devils on the board in the 79th minute.
By then, it was too late, largely thanks to an uninspired opening period from Duke.
"They dominated play in the first half," Barnes said. "We were playing OK-good enough to get a tie, 0-0, going into the half. But as a young team, it's hard to get back up after you let in two goals in the first."
The Blue Devils' youth, though, wasn't apparent Friday. The team, energized by playing its first game of the year in front of 6,000 raucous Hoosier fans, battled No. 7 Indiana to a scoreless first half.
The Hoosiers' Kevin Alston lofted a goal over the head of goalkeeper Brendan Fitzgerald in the 59th minute to open the scoring, but Duke responded less than four minutes later as midfielder Kyle Bethel knocked in a cross from Grella to even the score.
Both squads continued to push the pace the rest of the match, but Indiana's John Mellencamp was the only one to convert. Mellencamp struck a cross from Brad Ring just under the crossbar in the 85th minute, putting the Hoosiers back in front to stay.
The Blue Devils, however, showed that while they may not be fully comfortable with Kerr's offense, they're getting there.
"It's going to be a process," Barnes said. "It's not like we're going to come out on fire scoring tons of goals. We had some great attack this weekend. There were some spots in the game when we looked extremely dangerous... and then there were times when we took breaks and things weren't working that well."
Those struggles occurred largely in the game against the Fighting Irish. Duke's up-and-down weekend revealed both the team's potential and the danger associated with mental lapses such as those in Sunday's game.
"It proved to us that if we play well every game, we can beat anybody in the country," sophomore defender Christian Ibeagha said. "It also showed us that if we don't show up and play, we can be beaten.... We have to make sure it's consistent and we do it well on a consistent basis every time we're out on the field."
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