Friday morning marked an abrupt and shocking end to Duke’s ACC season as the Blue Devils were upset by Florida State in the ACC tournament quarterfinals.
For Duke (19-7), the opening-round loss comes only a week after sweeping the Seminoles (14-10) in the two teams’ regular season meeting. The 4-2 loss was the first time since 1986, the first year the tournament was played, that the Blue Devils have failed to make the semifinal round.
“Florida State came out with a really fired-up, tough attitude,” freshman Mary Clayton said. “They were consistent individually in their matches and maintained their leads, so we didn’t have much to feed off of.”
Starting with an easy win in the doubles point, Duke looked poised to take the match early. Led by the play of senior Elizabeth Plotkin and junior Reka Zsilinszka, the Blue Devils got off to a 1-0 lead, paralleling the week before.
But singles began poorly for Duke as only Clayton was able to take the opening set of her match. Top-seeded Blue Devil Ellah Nze fell in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3, to Lauren McCreless. Plotkin fought back to take the second set 6-4 after dropping her first to Katie Rybakova, but was defeated in the third set, 6-3.
From there, Duke was unable to play to its full abilities as Florida State steadily applied pressure to the defending ACC and national champions. The Blue Devils dropped four out of five singles contests to ultimately lose the match. Reka Zsilinszka’s match remained unfinished after Florida State locked up the match.
Duke effectively thrashed the Seminoles in last week’s matchup and dropped only one set in singles play. But Florida State used the proximity of its last meeting with the Blue Devils to change many game plans and rework its approach against Duke.
“They [Florida State] really reevaluated individually how to play us and that contributed to them playing better in this match,” Clayton said. “They also had a slight advantage because they were obviously motivated to play us again.”
The lone highlight for the Blue Devils Friday was the play of Clayton. Doubling with sophomore Monica Gorny, the pair went on to win in easy fashion, 8-4. In singles, Clayton provided the only individual victory as she managed to crush her Florida State opponent 6-1, 6-1. Combined between singles and doubles on the year, Clayton was the only Blue Devil to post a perfect 4-0 record on the year against the Seminoles.
“In doubles, my partner [Monica] played great.” Clayton said. “We played really solid. And in singles, my opponent was just a really good matchup for me. I just followed the same pattern as the week before.”
Fortunately for Duke, the loss does not eliminate it from NCAA play for the season. The Blue Devils’ strong profile and high national ranking virtually guarantees them an NCAA tournament bid, but the ACC tournament loss just about eliminates any hope Duke had of playing host to an NCAA tournament regional. An ACC crown would have given Duke the advantage of playing at home, but now the Blue Devils wil most likely hit the road, where they are 5-3 on the year.
Still, Clayton remains confident in her team’s resiliency to recover from defeat and to perform in the tournament.
“We are going to be more motivated to bounce back from this,” Clayton said. “We need to prove ourselves again.”
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