Seconds before the start of last night's men's soccer game, the Pirates from East Carolina huddled up at midfield. Dressed in bright purple uniforms, they broke their huddle or some reason with a cheer of "Go Blue!"
And go the Blue Devils did, cruising to a 6-0 victory at the Duke Soccer Stadium.
"It was an ideal result," said head coach John Rennie. "We've just played too many games, so you want very much to have a game like this, where you score some goals, get to play a lot of people, and nobody gets hurt."
Coach Rennie had reason to be pleased on all three accounts. The Blue Devils were never seriously threatened by East Carolina and performed well offensively against the defensive minded Pirates. This allowed Rennie to liberally substitute for a Blue Devil team that was tired and a bit beat up from last weekend's MetLife-adidas Classic.
The outcome of the game was never really in doubt. East Carolina's offense was not strong and frightening, like its mascot, the Pirate. Rather, its play was more similar to the pirate's feathered friend, the parrot. Annoyingly and repeatedly, East Carolina was content to pack in its end of the field in a desperate attempt to slow down the Duke offense. Yet the Blue Devils had good scoring chances early and often in the game, first finding the net when senior tri-captain A.J. Siebeneck took a pass from freshman Tony Volpe and deposited the shot in the upper-right-hand corner of the goal.
The rout was on. Freshman Dan Lehmann scored on a pass from senior tri-captain Steve Smith to increase the lead to 2-0 before the intermission. Sophomore Bobby Moghim began the second half with a little flair as he scored on a reverse header.
"I had a feeling the goalie was coming up behind me," said Moghim of his goal. "It was instinct to knock it back towards the goal. It was the only option I had."
Moghim would later lob a pass that junior Stan Brunson would redirect off his head and into the net to cap off the scoring.
In between Moghim's and Brunson's goals, Brian Kelly added to his impressive freshman campaign with another goal and junior Jason Kreis scored for the fourth consecutive game.
The easy victory allowed the Blue Devils to get some much desired game experience for many of the players on the squad, especially the nine freshmen. One freshman in particular filled in very well for Rennie.
"This was the first time Tony Volpe played," Rennie said. "I thought his first effort out there was very, very good."
Volpe, who had been nursing an injury, played the entire first half and assisted on the first Blue Devil goal. His performance in a starting role was especially important to a Duke team playing without four of its normal starters. Sophomores Judd Willmann, Eric Marshall, Brad Cartwright, and freshman Michael Dunne were all sidelined with injuries.
"We had four of our regulars out," Rennie said. "Most of them [have] just nagging injuries. We played, in the first eight days, five games. That's too much."
The team's upcoming schedule leaves little room for further healing. The Blue Devils must travel to Clemson this Sunday for their first ACC match of the 1993 season. The East Carolina game served as a good tune-up for that game, definitely, but it was also a solid victory, coming on the heels of the team's first loss of the year to Indiana.
Rennie was pleased but cautious when discussing the Blue Devils' improvement since that game.
"We wanted to do a better job of keeping possession of the ball, which we did," he said. "In a game like this, the players could play whichever way they wanted to and probably have won the game.
"We've worked on a lot of things. They won't really show up until we play against an opponent like an Indiana, which Clemson is. Hopefully, they'll show up on Sunday."
A.J. Siebeneck seemed confident that this victory helped the Blue Devils get ready for Sunday's showdown with the Tigers, as well as get over the loss to Indiana.
"We were looking forward to playing Clemson," Siebeneck said. "We felt like we had to prepare ourselves for Clemson. It was a lot of preparation for Clemson, getting a lot of players to play, and seeing who is playing well.
"We also had to respond well to our loss to Indiana. We wanted to come out and play hard and prove something to ourselves. "
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