Duke may want to start allowing dogs at every game.
For the second consecutive week, the tenth-ranked Blue Devils put on a show for their crowd of canines. Notching 10 goals and conceding none against Howard last Wednesday, then logging a no-nonsense shutout against Queens — opposing squads should shudder at the thought of facing Duke during its “Bark at the Park” series.
It was a 5-0 victory for the Blue Devils Tuesday night as they cruised past Queens in Koskinen Stadium, a scoreline emblematic of the team’s utter dominance on both ends of the ball. Such an assured performance bodes well for Duke as it jockeys for position in conference and national standings, especially ahead of an important road fixture at Virginia Tech.
To head coach John Kerr, it was formations and scouting that made all the difference.
“They [Queens] were really defensive-minded. We could push more guys forward into wide positions and just have two guys dealing with one. So, that made it pretty easy for us.”
Unfortunately for the Royals (3-8-3, 1-1-2 in the ASUN), their heavily defensive formation made little difference in stymying this electric Duke offense after the first frame. As far as goals were concerned, Queens managed to play the Blue Devils (7-2-4, 2-1-3 in the ACC) evenly through the halftime whistle. Although the score was level, however, the game’s flow was anything but.
Masterful individual play, timely field switches and incisive long balls allowed Duke to exert its will on the flanks. The Royals hardly touched the ball in the first half, much less generated an opportunity to score. They would end the frame with zero shots to the Blue Devils’ eight.
In explaining this superiority out wide and in possession, Kerr pointed to the work of his wing backs. “We pushed the two backs high and allowed them to overlap and get into the offense pretty quickly, which caused them a lot of problems.”
Cause problems they did. Practically every dangerous move from Duke was spurred on by the work of an overlapping defender, generating a numbers advantage for the Blue Devils and opening up the box for a centering pass.
It was with this formula that the Blue Devils would eventually break through, grabbing their first goal on a broken play after a strong move down the right wing. As was the norm in the first half, the wingers put the ball in the box among a mess of bodies. This time, it fell to the feet of graduate Luke Thomas, who rifled one at the Queens goalkeeper. It was turned aside, but the ricocheting ball glanced off a Royals defender and a fortuitous bounce put the Blue Devils up one.
The nature of the goal was of no import to Kerr, though. “Once you score, it opens up everything for you. They have to come out and expose themselves, so real happy to get that goal.”
In a manner not dissimilar to last week’s showing against Howard, this goal marked the opening of the proverbial floodgates for Duke. Every time someone touched the ball in the attacking third, there seemed to be a genuine threat brewing. This pressure would boil over in the form of the squad’s second goal, with Thomas getting on the scoresheet for real this time.
An errant clearance trickled out to Queens’ eighteen-yard box following a corner, where Thomas was lurking. Flicking the ball up with immense control, he fired away a curling but powerful volley with eyes for the net’s bottom right. There was nothing the Royals’ keeper could do; the Blue Devils doubled their lead.
“Once we got the second goal, we knew that we were going to be in control,” Kerr said.
This was no hyperbole, as Duke continued to dominate until the final whistle. Sophomore Ulfur Bjornsson further cemented himself as the team’s primary scoring option, extending the lead to three with a 62nd-minute strike.
A bar-down worldie from graduate Cameron Kerr and a last-minute cherry on top from freshman Sol Arbib rounded out the scoring.
All in all, it was another comfortable victory for the Blue Devils. “As you keep getting wins, you’re going to get confident,” Kerr said. “We can hang with anybody in the country.”
Duke will play its penultimate conference match in Blacksburg on Friday, aiming to bolster its resume with a win ahead of tournament play.
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