Second-half dominance sends Duke soaring past Eagles

At halftime of No. 4 Duke’s matchup with ACC rival Boston College Saturday at Koskinen Stadium, the Blue Devils couldn’t help but remember a similar situation Feb. 27 against Maryland, one of the elite teams in the country.

Saturday, Duke trailed the Eagles 8-4 at the break. That day against the Terrapins, the Blue Devils were down 9-1 at half, and they only fell further behind in what ended up being a 17-4 loss.

Against Boston College, though, Duke (11-3, 2-2 in the ACC) was able to turn its play around in a big way after intermission, scoring eight goals of its own and allowing just three in a 12-11 win that kept the Blue Devils in the ACC race.

“First of all, Boston College played a great game,” head coach Kerstin Kimel said. “I felt like our team did not come ready to play. We were able to flip a switch at halftime and we were able to play the way we are capable of playing in the second half—we hit a point where we really started to buckle down and control the game. I was really proud of our girls that we were able to do that.”

After the first 30 minutes, though, Duke had shown very few signs that it would be able to overcome the deficit. In the first period, the Eagles (8-4, 1-3) led in almost every statistical category: Boston College cleared the ball more effectively, took more shots, and scored on more of its free-position opportunities than the Blue Devils.

But the second half—especially the final 11 minutes—was more indicative of what this Duke team can do when it gets rolling. Lindsay Gilbride scored twice in a row to cut the Eagles’ lead to one, Sarah Bullard evened the scored with just under eight minutes to go, and Kat Thomas scored for Duke just 34 seconds later to put the Blue Devils ahead.

Defense took over from that point on—neither team finished another shot the rest of the way—and for Duke, it was good enough.

“This is a good lesson for our players, that we’ve got to play 60 minutes, not 30,” Kimel said. “Now we’re looking forward to getting ourselves ready to play [North Carolina] on Wednesday.”