With just under a minute remaining in the first half, things looked good for the Blue Devils. They were tied with the No. 1 team in the country on its home turf, and they seemed to be in prime position to upset the defending national champions.
Two quick goals by Maryland in the period’s final 40 seconds, however, turned what was a tie game into a two-goal deficit from which Duke was never able to recover. Despite five points each from Christie Kaestner and Emma Hamm, the No. 3 Blue Devils (3-1, 0-1 in the ACC) fell to the Terrapins in their ACC opener, 18-11.
“To give up two goals in under 40 seconds is hard,” head coach Kerstin Kimel said. “We kind of lost our edge a little bit, which was disappointing because we had done so well in the first half.”
Following freshman Maddy Morrissey’s first collegiate goal, Duke had tied the game at 7-7 and had found numerous holes in the Maryland (4-0, 1-0) defense, a unit that only allowed five goals per game before Saturday. Two Terrapin goals in the final minute of the half however, gave the defending national champions the momentum going into the break, and the Terrapins opened the second half with a 5-1 run to put the game out of reach.
The Blue Devils had no answer for Maryland’s trio of All-American attackers—Sarah Mollison, Katie Schwarzmann and Karri Johnson. Schwarzmann and Johnson, who finished with five goals each, ignited the Terrapins’ second half run with back-to-back goals against a Duke defense that has struggled in the second period all season, being out-scored by its opponents, 29-26.
“You can’t have lulls against a team like Maryland that has so many threats offensively,” Kimel said. “Moving forward, we need to be able to sustain a very consistent focus and effort for the full 60 minutes.”
Going into the contest, Duke’s game plan was to win the draw and control possession to negate the Terrapins’ offensive threats. Kimel insisted that while on paper Duke won the draw 16-15, the Blue Devils still need to concentrate on retaining possession.
“I think what is misleading about that is after we gained possession, we had the ball checked out of our stick,” Kimel said. “We have to make sure we protect our sticks well from those kind of situations, and then having options for people to move the ball to is really important.”
Duke’s head coach was quick to point out, though, that one early season loss to the top ranked team in the country does not doom the rest of the Blue Devils’ season.
“I thought we did a lot of really good things, and the main thing we really struggled with was we didn’t maintain our poise and composure, but that’s something we can work on and obviously get better moving forward,” Kimel said. “It’s still February, our whole season is in front of us. Games like this are the kind of games that as a team we’ll make sure we’re better from.”
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