With eight minutes left to play Sunday, Duke watched as its chances of advancing to the second round of the NCAA tournament grew slimmer.
With back-and-forth play the entire afternoon, the Blue Devils trailed Vanderbilt 15-14 before tying up the game with less than one minute to play. Following a timeout called by head coach Kerstin Kimel with 19 seconds left, senior Lindsay Gilbride scored a goal that hit the back of the net with just one second remaining on the clock. The goal gave Duke a dramatic win that propelled it one step closer to its goal of winning the program’s first national championship.
“We ran the play for Lindsay Gilbride, who was having a really good day,” Kimel said. “It was a play we have in our repertoire that we use. It wasn’t executed perfectly, but it was executed enough to get the look we wanted.”
Gilbride led the team with five goals and one assist in the game. She would, later in the week, amass several accolades from her play, including being named WomensLax.com’s Player of the Week and the Ronald McDonald House Athlete of the Week.
Goalkeeper Kaitlin Gaiss also contributed to the victory, adding a save with less than one minute remaining that gave possession back to the Blue Devils and allowed Gilbride to shoot.
Vanderbilt led the game early on, with its first goal coming just two minutes into the game. Both teams stayed head-to-head until an additional Duke goal halfway through the first half.
The Blue Devils continued with a 4-0 run late in the first half, but saw its 8-4 lead diminish quickly. The Commodores cut the lead to two with just over a minute left in the half, and used that momentum to their favor coming out of the locker room for the second half. They scored four straight goals in the new period’s first four minutes, before Duke retaliated with two goals of its own. Then, the Commodores quickly went on a 5-1 streak to lead the game 15-13 with eight minutes left to play. It looked bad for the Blue Devils—that is, until Gilbride’s shot.
In Duke’s Feb. 14 match-up against Vanderbilt in Nashville, the Blue Devils came away with a decisive 19-10 victory but were unable to create the same momentum for this game.
However, the team managed to pull through and will advance to the second round of the tournament, where it will face No. 2 Northwestern in an away contest Saturday. The Blue Devils hosted the then-No. 1 Wildcats at home earlier this season, losing 19-4.
Throughout the season, Kimel has emphasized team cohesion and growing together as a fairly young team, and despite what happens in Saturday’s game, she said she is proud of this year’s efforts.
“I really have to credit my staff and our senior class for really keeping the team down straight and narrow,” Kimel said. “This whole season, we’ve really been an unbelievable team; it’s just a testament to how hard they worked.”
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