It wasn’t easy, but the Blue Devils eventually extinguished the Flames.
Duke swept Liberty in the first game of the Duke Invitational, 25-10, 25-19 and 25-21 at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Flames have now lost seven of their last eight games and are in the middle of a four-game losing streak.
“Liberty is a good team,” Duke head coach Jolene Nagel said. “They play an incredibly tough schedule this year, and they have a lot of history and a lot of success.”
Duke (5-2) opened up with its most dominant set of the season so far, defeating Liberty (1-7) by 15 points, its largest margin of the season. The Blue Devils got out to a 4-0 start, forcing the Flames to call an early timeout. Liberty got on the board on its next play, but Duke answered back immediately, and its balanced combination of offense and defense prevented the Flames from making up any ground.
The Blue Devils posted a .433 attack percentage in set one, led by sophomore Elizabeth Cambell’s four kills on six attempts. Libero Ali McCurdy was the center of the defense, notching six digs and holding the Flames to a .000 attack percentage.
“I thought we served better than we have this year so that helped a lot,” Nagel said. “We were the aggressors, and we put the pressure on them which was great.”
Duke also led for the entirety of its second set, but Liberty made it a much closer game. Led by outside hitter Lillie Happen and setter Jade Craycraft on defense, who each notched a solo block in the set, the Flames posted four total team blocks.
Supplemented by a rejuvenated attack, including Happen’s 19 total attempts, Liberty closed in on the Blue Devils towards the middle of the set and was only down by three points for a stretch of the game.
“It didn’t surprise me at all that they [came back],” Nagel said. “They have a lot of talent. I just love that our team kept the communication going in those situations.”
But Duke managed to secure the victory, due to a strong offensive performance by junior outside hitter Jeme Obeime, who had a .889 attack percentage by the end of the second set. Freshman middle blocker Jordan Tucker also added to the offense with a .667 percentage, and is currently second on the team with a .368 percentage on the season. Nagel gave significant playing time to Tucker and the Blue Devils' other freshmen to continue to get them acclimated with college-level volleyball.
“We want to get opportunity and experience under people’s belts,” Nagel said. “We wanted to make sure that early in the season we’re developing our team, so we did make some changes after the first set for that purpose.”
Duke's third set was its weakest offensively, with a team attack percentage of only .204. The Flames quickly took their first lead of the game with a 2-1 score, and were able to hold off Duke’s attack until it took a 7-6 lead.
After Duke ripped off three consecutive points to push its lead to 10-6, Liberty was forced to take a time out. Although the Flames were on the Blue Devils’ trail for the remainder of the game, only down by two points for much of the set, the timeout slowed Liberty’s pace and the game was handed back to Duke. The Blue Devils’ victory over the Flames marks their fifth sweep of the season.
“It was good to play only three sets today because… Liberty can play well,” Nagel said. “They’re a very smart team and very scrappy.”
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