Duke traveled to College Park, Md., and Chestnut Hill, Mass., this weekend to face off against two conference opponents. The Blue Devils (13-3, 3-0 in the ACC) had a strong weekend, sweeping Maryland (9-6, 1-1) Friday night and Boston College (10-4, 0-3) Sunday afternoon.
The Blue Devil attack against Maryland was led by senior outside hitter Rachael Moss, who picked up her fourth straight double-double after posting 11 kills and 11 digs. Moss had 24 attacks and only three errors, plus a service ace, as Duke won all three sets by a convincing margin. This strong performance allowed the Blue Devils to extend their winning streak against Maryland to seven consecutive victories.
“We want to keep a level of consistency up at all times,” Moss said. “We have been trying to play each game at as high a level as we are capable of, without losing our momentum. This weekend we did a great job of keeping up the momentum throughout the entire game.”
Two weeks ago, the Blue Devils’ showed a major weakness of unforced serving errors against the defending NCAA champion Penn State. Head coach Jolene Nagel told The Chronicle two weeks ago that she planned to have the team focus on reducing these service errors while still continuing to attack the opponents on serve in practice this week.
Duke’s focus on serving this week appeared to pay off, since the team was able to keep the Terrapins guessing throughout the match by presenting a number of different offensive schemes that all began with the serve.
“I thought we did really well in the match against Maryland,” Nagel said. “We made some errors, but we were able to apply a lot of pressure with our serve starting in the first set. Maryland came along and made some changes but the serve was pretty consistent throughout.”
Penn State was the only team this season that was able to minimize the effectiveness of Duke’s powerful front blocking, and Maryland attempted to follow with an offensive attack that was similar to what had worked for the Nittany Lions. The Terrapins continually hit the ball deep and put pressure on the Blue Devils’ back row, but Duke’s blockers were not caught off guard by the unorthodox attacking strategy.
“One of the things we focus on all the time is making sure that blocking is where it needs to be,” Nagel said. “Our defense starts with our blocking and when we are blocking balls well, it allows us to dig balls around it.”
The match against Boston College appeared that it would be a difficult battle for the Blue Devils as the Eagles tied the first set at 21. Duke rallied by winning four of the next five points and sealed the first set at 25-22. But after the first set, the Eagles were no competition for the Blue Devils, as they lost the next two 25-14 and 25-16. Duke showed the consistency it had been looking for throughout the weekend against Maryland and Boston College.
The Blue Devils had 10 service aces in the win: Junior libero Claire Smalzer had three, sophomore setter Kellie Catanach had two and freshman Nailah Waterfield had one. Freshman middle blocker Christiana Gray had seven kills with an outstanding hitting percentage of .186, in addition to her six blocks.
After the set of victories this weekend, Duke is currently tied for first place in the ACC standings. The Blue Devils’ defense has proven itself to be one of the strongest in the ACC, holding opponents to conference-low .142 hitting percentage.
The Blue Devils continue conference play at Cameron Indoor Stadium next weekend. Duke hopes to stay undefeated in the ACC as the team lines up across from Virginia Oct. 2 and Virginia Tech Oct. 3.
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