Two years ago, the Blue Devils won the national championship. Last year, they made it to the semifinals.
People are expecting Duke to be near the top once again as the 2012 Blue Devils gear up for a new campaign ranked No. 2, behind only reigning national champion Virginia. Head coach John Danowski, however, is quick to discount polls before any games are played.
“We’re overrated in the sense that you’ve got to put somebody up there at the beginning of the year,” said Danowski, who is entering his sixth season. “We realize that we’re still very young.”
Duke will be defined by how quickly its youth can develop this season. With the graduation of last year’s leading scorer Zach Howell, who finished second in the ACC with 43 goals, the two highest returningpoint getters from last season are sophomores Jordan Wolf and Christian Walsh. Wolf was the team’s second-leading goal scorer last season, placing 31 between the iron and dishing out a team-high 20 assists as well. The Blue Devils finished last season tied for third in the country with 121 assists.
Walsh, who also plays attack, notched 21 goals and 13 assists in his freshman year. For this team to overcome its youth, Danowski identified passing ability and chemistry as keys to success.
“We’ve got to be really unselfish,” Danowski said. “The team process has to be evident everywhere. Whether that’s on offense, defense or facing off or special teams, it’s got to appear that we’re really unselfish and really play well together.”
In last year’s 9-4 semifinal loss to Maryland, Duke played seven freshmen and seven sophomores. One of those players was goalkeeper Dan Wigrizer—now a junior—who saved 55.0 percent of incoming shots last season, a significant improvement from his freshman campaign during which he stopped just 50.8 percent.
Although Danowski landed a highly touted recruit for between the posts in Kyle Turri, brother of senior midfielder Justin Turri, the job is still Wigrizer’s. The team believes he can continue his trend of improvement.
“If he could make a jump to 57 or 58, two or three percentage points, we’d be delighted,” Danowski said. “He’d be close to being an All-American if at the end of the year he ended up somewhere in the high 50s.”
Kyle Turri may not see significant action in his freshman year, but some of the other first-years will be counted on to contribute this season.
Will Haus, whose brother notched 28 points for Maryland last season, has the potential to be an immediate force for the Blue Devils on the attacking end. Kyle Keenan, also an attacker, will join him in the competition for time up front.
Another acclaimed recruit, Brian Dailey, should earn some minutes but will face stiff competition for the action from players who have already entrenched themselves as longstick midfielders. Senior CJ Costabile and sophomore Luke Duprey both played in all 20 games for Duke last season at that position.
The midfield features some of the team’s key veterans, such as junior David Lawson and senior Robert Rotanz, who finished fourth and fifth on the team last year in points, respectively. It might be easy to count on forwards Wolf and Walsh to step up their production in their second year of play, but realistically the team will be at full-throttle if the middle of the field can reach its offensive potential.
“We’ve got middies who are capable of initiating offense and making plays,” Danowski said. “While attackmen are on the field twice as much as the midfielders, they should get more opportunities, but we think that we’ve got a lot of guys who can make plays.”
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