Contender or pretender?
This weekend, everyone will get a glimpse of reality, as No. 18 Duke enters coming off a dominant 17-9 victory against Elon in its season opener.
It will not be easy for the Blue Devils, who will have a turnaround time of less than 36 hours between games this weekend, when they host Campbell Friday at 2 p.m. before playing against No. 9 Northwestern Sunday at noon at Koskinen Stadium. While Duke blasted Campbell 20-4 two seasons ago, it dropped last season’s 12-10 contest against the Wildcats, who enter the game with one of the most explosive offenses in the nation.
“It’s going to be a quick turnaround, but with one less week in our season, we have a lot of Friday-Sunday, Saturday-Monday games in our schedule this year, which is also how [the NCAA tournament] is set up,” Blue Devil head coach Kerstin Kimel said. “The bigger challenge for us is having our young team be able to shift from one gear to the other.”
Against Northwestern (3-0), Duke will need its defense to replicate its showing against the Phoenix, when an inexperienced squad shut down the Elon attack. Although the Phoenix scored nine goals, four came within the last six minutes to bolster their output.
As a result, freshmen defender Gigi Vasile was awarded the ACC Defensive Player of the Week after holding her assignment—Elon’s second-leading scorer—without a goal. Senior defender Anne Slusser anchored the group, leading the contest in caused turnovers, as the unit impressed in defensive coach Bria Irizarry’s debut in Durham.
But Northwestern has dominated its competition thus far, outscoring its opponents 54-17 in its first three contests. Although they started the season against inferior opponents in Canisius and Detroit Mercy, the Wildcats dominated No. 19 Colorado 15-8, and have averaged an overwhelming 42 shots per game.
Preseason All-American Selene Lasota and senior Danita Stroup lead Northwestern, as the duo has combined for 16 goals and seven assists thus far. The Wildcats have also won 49 of 77 draw controls, often dominating the possession battle on the heels of the efforts from senior Shelby Fredericks, who helped them win 14 of 26 draws last season against the Blue Devils’ Olivia Jenner.
Regardless, Kimel is confident that her squad can use last year’s film to its advantage against Northwestern.
“Their first two games, they dominated, and they played in snow,” Kimel said. “Northwestern has some pretty heavy tendencies, and so we can kind of see some things that they’ve done over the years in the way they’re playing now.”
First, though, Duke (1-0) will face the Camels (0-1), who mustered only five goals against Richmond, their only contest of the season. In the game, Campbell allowed its opponent to successfully clear the ball more than 95 percent of the time, an area the Blue Devils succeeded in against the Phoenix.
Duke was able to advance the ball down the field due to a swift progression of passes on clearing attempts, starting from sophomore goalkeeper Gabbe Cadoux. In total, the Blue Devils emerged successful on 18 of their 19 clearing attempts, a far cry above their 79.4 percent mark last season.
But Duke’s players are not willing to look past the Camels ahead of its first top-10 contest of the year.
“My mindset going into games is that it’s just another day. It’s just another day playing lacrosse,” Vasile said. “It shouldn’t be about who we’re playing, but how ready we are.”
As everyone looks on to see if the Blue Devils can replicate their season-opening performance, they will use the victory as a source of confidence heading into the weekend, their last nonconference matchups before starting ACC play Feb. 24 against Virginia Tech.
"There are always some nerves, but we can always look back and get confidence from our game against Elon and look to continue to improve," Slusser said. "[We] really just [need to] feed off that energy from last weekend."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.