Duke entered Sunday’s contest looking to avenge last year’s heartbreaking 10-9 overtime loss to the Fighting Irish.
Instead, the Blue Devils watched as history repeat itself—this time in their first conference matchup of the year.
With just 89 seconds left to play, senior Grace Muller found the back of the net to give No. 11 Notre Dame a 12-11 edge—its first lead of the contest—and the dramatic comeback victory. Despite sophomore Olivia Jenner’s career-high seven points, eighth-ranked Duke could not recover and instead suffered its first loss of the season as the Fighting Irish ran out the clock following Muller’s goal.
“This happened in almost the same situation last year,” Jenner said. “We were winning against Notre Dame, and they scored a golden goal in overtime. It just speaks to the caliber of ACC teams, but ultimately we handed this game to them today.”
Although the Blue Devils (4-1, 0-1 in the ACC) jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead, the Fighting Irish (6-1, 1-0) snapped to attention and fired off three straight goals of their own to knot the score midway through the opening half.
Jenner shifted the momentum back in Duke’s favor with a free position goal at the 14:20 mark for her 11th goal and second hat trick of the season. The Blue Devils slipped two more goals past Notre Dame goalkeeper Samantha Giacalone to finish the half with a 6-3 advantage, holding the high-octane Fighting Irish offense in check—the same offense that entered the game ranked sixth nationally with 17.3 goals per contest.
But the final 20 minutes were an entirely different story for Duke. The Fighting Irish came out of the break firing on all cylinders and notched the first two scores of the half to cut the Blue Devil lead to one. The two sides exchanged goals from there until Jenner was given a yellow card for an illegal follow through with 11:50 remaining and her team up 9-8 on what would have otherwise been her fifth goal of the contest.
“I was not happy with that call,” Duke head coach Kerstin Kimel said. “From what it looked like on the replay, I was unhappy with it…. To have [Jenner] out of the game for that extended period of time is not good. She’s one of our top attackers, and also it puts more pressure on our defense to play a man down.”
With a player advantage, Notre Dame junior Molly Cobb scored her second straight goal to tie the score for the first time since 5:30 into the first half. The Blue Devils reclaimed the lead twice more, but the Fighting Irish retaliated each time, ultimately claiming the edge when there was no time for Duke to bite back.
On the final scoring play, Notre Dame fired a free-position shot at Blue Devil sophomore goalkeeper Jamie Lockwood. Although Lockwood stopped the initial attempt, Muller was in the right spot to collect the ground ball and beat the Duke netminder for the game-winner.
As has been a common theme so far this season, a high volume of stick-handling errors continued to plague the Blue Devils, giving Notre Dame opportunities to climb back from every deficit. Duke committed 20 turnovers on the afternoon—only seven of which were forced. The Blue Devil offense stagnated as a result, firing off just eight shots in the second half compared to 19 from their opponent.
“The bottom line is we didn’t take good care of the ball,” Kimel said. “We did not stay composed. We turned the ball over way too much and quite frankly just put too much pressure on our defense. They’re a good offensive team, and we let them have the ball and way too many chances there toward the end of the second half.”
Despite Lockwood’s career-high 12 saves between the pipes, Duke’s giveaways—combined with 18 second-half fouls—enabled the Fighting Irish’s 19-shot and nine-goal onslaught in the final 20 minutes of play.
“[Lockwood] continues to improve and get better,” Kimel said. “I don’t necessarily think we did her justice today because she’s still learning, she’s still green and we can’t put that kind of pressure on her at the end of the game.... Ultimately, we didn’t take care of the ball the way we need to in order to maintain and sustain momentum in the game.”
The Blue Devils will have just short of a week to recover before hosting No. 20 Virginia Tech Saturday at 1 p.m. In the interim, Duke will look to clean up its game and prepare for the heart of conference play.
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