Battered, bloodied but resilient.
The stage was set with intermixed tints of blue dotting the bleachers of Cameron Indoor Stadium, and the band blared the fight song as the rivals from Chapel Hill arrived.
It was deep in the third set, with Duke on its heels down two sets to none. The score was tied 20-20, and North Carolina’s powerhouse offense had been pounding the Blue Devil squad all night. A blistering shot from the Tar Heels hurtled toward the ground and Duke’s Mailinh Godschall laid herself on the floor, scraping her hand on the maple hardwood of Cameron Indoor and coming up with a reddened hand. The raucous stadium fell silent as her team huddled around her; they parted to reveal an irrepressible Godschall striding back to the court, hand bandaged in white cotton.
The beleaguered but belligerent Blue Devils took a 23-22 third-set lead. However, it wasn’t enough to stop the unremitting North Carolina offense, and the Tar Heels claimed the third set and the match to raucous applause from the baby blue-clad fans in attendance.
“We're obviously disappointed,” head coach Jolene Nagel told The Chronicle after the match. “We put ourselves in a good position to be able to finish and get that set, but our errors kind of interrupted that along the way.”
The match promised to be a tightly contested tiff from the outset. Duke (6-8, 2-1 in the ACC) had struggled in nonconference play amid a highly competitive schedule, but had momentum behind it after opening conference play with two sound ACC victories at home. Meanwhile, North Carolina (11-1, 3-0) is off to a blistering start to the season and was looking for revenge after losing to Duke in Cameron Indoor last year for the first and only time since 2017.
The offensive standout for the Blue Devils was junior Kerry Keefe with 13 kills on the night, bolstered by graduate setter Grace Penn, who recorded 27 assists.
“I attribute that a lot to our passers. I can't get any kills without their help,” Keefe said. “Also, [Grace Penn] fed me the ball on every good pass, and that helps a lot.”
The match began with North Carolina surging to a commanding 11-point lead. Up 18-7, the band played “Runaway Baby” by Bruno Mars; the Tar Heels seemed to understand the message and carried their lead, winning the set 25-16 with a massive advantage in kills and digs.
The second set was a different story, with both sides trading the lead to a 15-15 tie. The Tar Heels fired off several big hits — one sending senior Rachel Richardson careening into the water cooler in defense — and won a challenge to tally four consecutive points, marking a massive momentum swing. The Duke offense responded with many big kills of its own, but North Carolina’s impenetrable defense allowed the Tar Heels to close the set 25-21.
“We didn't help ourselves at all because we had more service errors,” Nagel said. “So we'd do something really great to try to block or play defense or get a kill, and we'd get one point maybe, but we certainly weren't scoring with runs.”
The third set, much like the second, saw the rivals swapping the lead multiple times. Neither squadron could string together many points, and the set was marked by strong offensive plays speckled with errors from both sides of the net. The Blue Devils and Tar Heels were neck-and-neck well into the business end of the set, tied at 23 before a block from North Carolina and an error from Duke sealed the match in straight sets.
“It's frustrating because we started kind of slow, and by the end of it, we see where we can be and we know we can be even better than where we ended,” Keefe said. “[We’re] keeping our head up and figuring out how to start the way we finished.”
The story doesn’t end in Cameron, though. The rivals will spar again Friday as Duke travels eight miles to Chapel Hill for a rematch against North Carolina.
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