Duke winning streak ends with Maryland loss

Despite coming off of a five-game win streak including a sweep Friday against Boston College, Duke was unable to keep up the momentum, falling to Maryland 3-1 on the road Sunday in Comcast Pavilion.

The Blue Devils (22-5, 14-3 in the ACC) got off to a relatively strong start, hitting .455 and having only one error in the first set to close out the Terrapins (19-10, 10-7) 25-21. The next set, which Duke lost 16-25, was the worst one for the Blue Devils, as they committed five errors and only hit .132 to Maryland’s .516. The next two sets had costly errors by both teams, but the home team prevailed 27-25 and 25-20.

“Maryland played very well, and I guess they just wanted it more than us and put in more effort,” head coach Jolene Nagel said. “I feel like we certainly need to be more aggressive and execute better than we did in order to be successful. I just felt like we didn’t play strong enough defense in order to be successful today, and I think if we could’ve touched a little more on the block, we could possibly have set some more balls and given ourselves a chance.”

Usually the strongest part of Duke’s game, the Blue Devil defense was lacking on Sunday, allowing the Terrapins to hit .388, the highest hitting percentage any team has had against Duke this season. Maryland ended the evening with 66 kills and only 16 errors, while the Blue Devils had 55 kills and 18 errors.

“Everything starts with communication, and I think it wasn’t as sharp today as it was say when we played [North Carolina],” Nagel said. “Having people communicate early enough so that we can get in good positions and get in positions to make plays we need to make is important, and that’s part of the reason why the hitting percentage wasn’t as high. We needed to dig more balls or control those balls better so that we could get better opportunities.”

Despite this weekend’s loss, Duke still holds the No. 1 spot in the conference, owning a two-match lead over the Tar Heels, and is preparing to gear up and finish strong in its last three ACC matches.

“It’s too bad we couldn’t get the win because we really needed this today,” Nagel said. “Our team knows we didn’t give our best effort today, and they care deeply about the team, and I think that’s what’s going to help the team going into the ACC Tournament.”