BALTIMORE—After advancing to eight straight Final Fours in head coach John Danowski's first eight years at Duke, fighting for national titles in late May had become routine for the Blue Devils.
But for the second straight season, Duke is heading home after the tournament’s first weekend.
Seventh-seeded Loyola ousted Duke 16-11 Saturday afternoon at the Ridley Athletic Complex, taking advantage of 19 Blue Devil turnovers to avenge its 15-6 regular season loss to Duke. Facing the nation's fourth-best scoring offense, the Greyhounds showed off their own explosiveness led by senior Zach Herreweyers and a three-goal, five-assist outing from freshman Pat Spencer.
Junior attackman Jack Bruckner poured in a season-high six goals to pace the Blue Devils, but Duke was unable to find an answer for an offense that scored nearly six goals more than its 10.5 average.
“We were a good team, not a great team. The struggle we had as coaches was to get the guys to play a certain way and every team is different,” Danowski said. “The joy of coaching is that one year really has nothing to do with the last and you hope that you can continue to get better, but… this team was consistently inconsistent.”
The Greyhounds (13-3) jumped on the Blue Devils early, building an early 3-0 lead with goals from Spencer and Herreweyers. As Duke—which ranked 52nd among 68 Division I teams in turnovers per game at 14.8 entering Saturday—struggled to find its footing offensively, Bruckner kept the Blue Devils within striking distance.
The Belle Terre, N.Y., native got Duke (11-7) on the board 11 minutes into the game and added a second tally just 36 seconds later. Every time Loyola threatened to pull away by extending its lead to two or three, Bruckner responded, scoring all six Blue Devil goals in the opening half to keep his team within three going into the locker room.
Bruckner's six tallies were one shy of Zach Greer's program record for most goals in a postseason game.
“I thought [Bruckner] was terrific today. He finished everything that touched his stick inside,” Loyola head coach Charlie Toomey said. “Sometimes, they got to the middle of the field, it broke our defense down, and you saw the result. It was [Bruckner] on the inside doing what he does as a good finisher.”
Throughout the first half, the Greyhound offense peppered Duke goalkeeper Danny Fowler—who managed eight first-half saves to match Loyola goalkeeper Jacob Stover—with 26 shots despite coming up short in many statistical categories.
The Blue Devils outshot the Greyhounds 44-43 for the game, collected 14 more ground balls and had junior faceoff specialist Kyle Rowe dominate as he did in the teams' regular season matchup by winning 23-of-31 draws to give Duke chances to get back in the game.
But after a Blue Devil goal from Deemer Class early in the third period cut the deficit to 9-7, Loyola made sure Duke would get no closer, going on a 3-0 spurt. The Greyhounds added a 3-0 Herreweyers run to start the fourth quarter and put the game out of reach after the Blue Devils cut the deficit to 12-9.
“They made more lacrosse plays than we did,” Danowski said. “Statistically, you look at it and say, ‘Wow, you guys must’ve won by a bunch.’ And that wasn’t true today.”
After getting torched by ACC Offensive Player of the Year Myles Jones for eight points in the regular season, Loyola keyed on the Duke senior midfielder.
The Greyhounds—who surrender 8.1 goals per game—limited Jones and his partner in crime Class to just one combined goal, though the duo registered five assists.
“They had time to double and took advantage of us feeling the game and capitalized on the turnovers we made,” Jones said. “It was tough—they would slide quickly and double to us and we weren’t communicating with each other to put ourselves in a spot to succeed.”
After winning national championships in 2013 and 2014 as freshmen and sophomores, Jones, Class and the rest of the Blue Devil seniors got to play in just two NCAA tournament games in their final two seasons.
“The toughest part is not being able to hang with those guys anymore,” Jones said. “We had success our freshman and sophomore years, but I think it just sucks to have the best four years of your life come to an end after losing today.”
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Twitter: @mpgladstone13
A junior from just outside Philadelphia, Mitchell is probably reminding you how the Eagles won the Super Bowl this year and that the Phillies are definitely on the rebound. Outside of The Chronicle, he majors in Economics, minors in Statistics and is working toward the PJMS certificate, in addition to playing trombone in the Duke University Marching Band. And if you're getting him a sandwich with beef and cheese outside the state of Pennsylvania, you best not call it a "Philly cheesesteak."