Duke's dreams of an ACC tournament championship will have to wait for another year.
Despite an early 3-0 lead and nine saves from junior goalkeeper Kelsey Duryea, second-seeded Duke was upended by sixth-seeded Syracuse 14-10 in the ACC tournament semifinals Friday in Charlottesville, Va. The Orange will battle top-seeded North Carolina for the championship crown at Klöckner Stadium Sunday at 1 p.m.
“We did a lot of good things, but we did not have the ball enough,” Duke head coach Kerstin Kimel told GoDuke.com. “We felt confident that if we had the ball, we would create good scoring opportunities. We did that at points in the second half, but we did not capitalize on enough of our scoring opportunities. We got the looks, but we did not finish. If you don’t do that, you are probably going to go home with a loss.”
Paced by five starting seniors, Duke (14-3) put three tallies on the board in the first five minutes of the contest. Midfielder Taylor Trimble started the scoring off a feed from teammate Chelsea Landon and midfielder Katie Trees found attackman Brigid Smith to double the Blue Devil lead. Just 30 seconds later, Trimble assisted on attacker Kerrin Maurer's first goal of the day to push the score to 3-0.
Syracuse (13-6) responded immediately with a tally by Kailah Kempeny, but Smith and Trees answered with a pair of goals to extend Duke’s lead to 5-1. Orange junior Halle Majorana then fed Devon Collins to trim the deficit to 5-2, but Landon found Maurer to give Duke a four-goal lead again with 14:52 left in the first half.
But for the final 44:52 of the afternoon, the game belonged to Syracuse.
In a four-minute span, the Orange notched three unassisted goals as Taylor Poplawski, Majorana and Taylor Gait each scored to make it a one-goal game.
With 9:28 to play before halftime, junior Kayla Treanor assisted Loren Ziegler and Syracuse tied the game 6-6. The Blue Devil defense regrouped for the rest of the half, and the teams headed to the locker rooms deadlocked.
Syracuse came out of the break in a good rhythm offensively, as Riely Donahue scored the first of her three goals in the second half to give the Orange their first lead of the game 2:07 into the third quarter. Ziegler and Donahue continued to punish the Duke back line, extending the lead to 9-6 with 24:55 to play.
One minute later, Duke seemed to get back into the game as junior attacker Emma Lazaroff snapped Syracuse’s 7-0 run and broke a 21:02 scoring drought for the Blue Devils. But senior Gabby Jacquith and Poplawski put up two unassisted scores for the Orange to make it 11-7.
Duke continued to fight back thanks to a pair of tallies by Harney and Maddie Crutchfield, but Ziegler responded with a free-position goal to put the Syracuse lead back to three.
With 6:59 to play, Trimble found the back of the net for the second time to make it a two-goal game, but that was the closest Duke would get. Donahue and Majorana delivered one more score apiece to hand the Orange the four-goal win and vault Syracuse into the championship game.
“The word is finish,” Kimel said. “At this point in the season, everybody we face is going to be a great team. When we have the possessions, we have to finish those plays. When we look at the film, that is going to be what we see. At this point in the season, it is get it done or go home.”
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