Normally, block parties are known for their music, dancing and outdoor festivities. But Wednesday evening, Duke volleyball hosted a different sort of block party in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The Blue Devils bested N.C. State (25-23, 22-25, 25-17, 25-18) in a match where each team’s success lived or died at the net. It seemed like every point was decided by one of two fates—either the hitter would slam the ball off the block and find success, or the blocking unit would send the ball right back down onto the floor of the hitter’s half of the court.
“I feel like what helped us tonight was our passing,” head coach Jolene Nagel said. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was decent. The other thing that probably helped to keep them limited was our blocking. … And I feel like with our serve, we kept the pressure on.”
In the first set, freshman outside hitter Kerry Keefe ripped the ball through the block of the Wolfpack’s sophomore outside hitter Martyna Leoniak and freshman middle blocker Lily Cropper. Leoniak exacted her revenge the next two points with a swing that bounced off the hands of Keefe and sophomore middle blocker Rylie Kadel into the antenna, then with a swing that grazed the tips of Keefe’s block that couldn’t be recovered by the defense. Moments later, Keefe sent the ball into the far corner of the Wolfpack’s half of the court.
Graduate transfer setter Devon Chang even added a couple kills to Duke’s stat sheet during the match, leaping above the net and dumping the ball onto the unexpecting Wolfpack’s court to put the Blue Devils up 23-20 in the first set, which Kadel soon ended with a slam onto freshman outside hitter Ava Brizard’s hands. Duke (12-8, 3-6 in the ACC) ended the first set with 20 kills compared to N.C. State’s (11-9, 5-4) eight, while the Wolfpack had five blocks to Duke’s one.
As graduate student opposite hitter Vanja Bukilic and Leoniak continued to dominate the defense at the net, Duke continued to find ways to get around them, mostly through tipping over the block or purposely aiming the ball so it bounces off the blockers’ hands and onto their court, a tactic known as tooling. In the plays after Johnson was blocked, Keefe leapt over the block to tip the ball onto the 10-foot line, and sophomore middle blocker Georgia Stavrinides threw the ball off of the hands of Bukilic the point after.
“Definitely in the second set, they got on me, so I just had to readjust, and my whole team had my back if I wasn’t getting over the block,” Johnson said. “I think blocking-wise, the middles were doing great closing to me, so they were really helping me out and trying to put up a better block for our defense.”
Part of what made the play at the net so back-and-forth was the relatively even height matchups of both squads. Take Keefe, Cropper and Leoniak, for example, all of whom are 6-foot-3; similarly, 6-foot Johnson and 6-foot-1 sophomore middle blocker Jada Allen had a competitive matchup at the net throughout the evening. Interestingly, though, Duke’s front row has proven itself even when it didn’t have the height advantage; against Pittsburgh, whose hitters reach heights of up to 6-foot-5, both Duke and the Panthers left the match with eight blocks.
And despite how play at the net dominated the flow of the game, the Blue Devils had notable performances from the back half of the court, too. Rachel Richardson led Duke with 18 digs, a season high for the sophomore outside hitter.
“She had to be up against a big block, and the fact that she has these 18 digs showed that she really helped us in the back court, too,” Nagel said of Richardson. “She took advantage of when our block was getting some touches. … Our team did a better job tonight of getting that ball up to the target nicely so that we could maybe run a better transition to score.”
Duke had six aces during the match, led by Johnson—who leads the ACC in total aces and aces per set—and Kadel with two apiece.
“I think just going for it,” Johnson said when asked about her mentality behind the service line. “ … Obviously, [we want to] make the serve, but [the coaches] leave me a little leeway to just go for it.”
Duke’s win Wednesday evening breaks a two-game losing streak against N.C. State, who routed Duke in three sets last October in Raleigh, marking the Wolfpack’s largest ever margin of victory against the Blue Devils. N.C. State has never won an away game against Duke, sitting at 0-18 on the road ever since the two teams’ first matchup in September 2001.
“I feel like our team worked hard for that win tonight,” Nagel said. “They worked hard for it. And they did that.”
Duke will be in Cameron Indoor Stadium again Sunday at 1 p.m., where they’ll take on another Tobacco Road rival in North Carolina.
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Leah Boyd is a Pratt senior and a social chair of The Chronicle's 118th volume. She was previously editor-in-chief for Volume 117.