The Cardinal kept the ball on Duke’s half of the field for most of the first half.
But then — like magic — the Blue Devils took it over the line.
Freshman midfielder Julius Suber sent the ball sideways on a beautiful cross, and in what seemed like a fraction of a second, sophomore striker Ulfur Bjornsson met the ball with his foot and shot it straight into the goal. It was the end of the first half, and Duke was up 1-0 against No. 1 Stanford.
The Blue Devils met the Cardinal for only the second time in program history Sunday. Duke held onto a lead until the last 15 minutes of the game, after which Stanford scored two goals to end the match in a 2-2 tie. It was a pretty day in Cagan Stadium but an ugly match. In the first half, Stanford midfielder Zach Bohane took a ball straight to the face. The Blue Devils racked up four yellow cards during the game. In total, the teams tallied 29 fouls.
“Stanford's going to be a better rival for Duke going forward in the ACC,” head coach John Kerr said Monday.
After a heartbreaking loss to North Carolina the weekend prior, Duke (3-2-2, 1-1-1 in the ACC) needed to win, so it made use of scoring opportunities when it could get them.
“We needed to bounce back,” Kerr said. “And, having the motivation of playing the No. 1 team in the country away from home … We knew we had to bring our A-game.”
The Cardinal (7-1-1, 2-0-1) started off with a cool Californian confidence, which kept the ball primarily in its possession for the first half. Stanford always flocked to the ball, taking it out of the Blue Devils’ reach with ease and keeping them in a defensive position that made it challenging to transition to offense.
“We knew that Stanford was going to come out strong, especially being at home,” Kerr said. “We felt that if we could get through that portion of the game, let the game settle down, then we could hurt them with our offense.”
Despite the home team’s confident control of the ball, Duke’s defenders deftly kept the Cardinal out of its box. The team played with a speed and efficiency that knocked Stanford off-balance. In the first half, the Cardinal shot six corner kicks but couldn’t follow through with a goal of their own.
“We were very difficult to break down, and we held our ground and made sure that they didn't get too many good looks at the goal,” Kerr said, “And when they did, Wessel [Speel] was there to stop them in the back.”
After their late first-half goal, Duke brought the fight onto Stanford’s territory. Ten minutes in — and three headers later — the ball shot off of graduate forward Adam Luckhurst’s ginger head and into the goal. The Blue Devils went running down the field, wide smiles of pure joy and a little bit of disbelief. They were up 2-0.
“In the second half, we did a better job controlling the ball and not forcing it and letting the play develop. I thought we created some excellent chances,” Kerr said.
The Cardinal were urgent to answer, and at first the Blue Devils held them off. But then, with almost 15 minutes left, Stanford broke through with a goal of its own. Sophomore midfielder Will Cleary methodically crossed the ball over to his fellow midfielder Fletcher Bank, who headed the ball into the net like a bullet. It was a one-point game.
It seemed like the Blue Devils might have clinched it. Their defense was holding strong, despite Stanford’s burst of energy. But with just more than two minutes left, Stanford finally evened the score. Bohane, who took a ball to the face in the first half, took the ball to the goal in the second. Things got heated. Seconds after that, Duke freshman midfielder Jamie Kabussu received a yellow card — and then so did graduate goalkeeper Speel, for dissenting the call on his teammate.
In the final minutes, both teams were in a frenzy looking to pull ahead, but neither did. The score kept even.
Letting go of a two-goal lead meant frustration for the Blue Devils, but it cannot erase the fact that the unranked team refused to lose to the best in the country on its own soil — and at 10 p.m. Durham time.
The Blue Devils look to continue its ferocious ACC competition Friday at N.C. State.
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