Will wonders never cease?
The No. 6 men's soccer team, still rife with injuries at many key positions, continued its recent string of late-game heroics Sunday as it defeated Florida International 2-1 in overtime in a first-round NCAA tournament game in Miami.
"It was probably the best comeback ever in our NCAA tournament play," head coach John Rennie said. "It was a great combination of guts and effort and poise that pulled us through."
The Blue Devils (15-6-1) squeaked by No. 15 FIU (16-4-1) for their 11th win in their last 13 contests. Duke has won all three overtime games it has played during this surge. And it certainly doesn't hurt to have a clutch goalkeeper; senior Garth Lagerwey has sported an 0.36 goals-against average over that time.
This match, however, was unlike most others for Duke in that the Blue Devils were facing more than the normal dose of adversity. Duke might not even have had to travel for this game had it not been for a procedural blunder which forfeited the home-field advantage to the Golden Panthers.
Furthermore, the contest was waged in sweltering Florida humidity, conditions to which the Blue Devils were unaccustomed. And naturally, no Duke match would be complete without a debilitating injury to a key player; Sunday, the victim of the match was senior J. J. Ossola, who was lost for the year when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament in the first half.
"We had 18 players dressed, and we used 17 of them," Rennie said.
To make the outlook even more bleak, the Blue Devils were forced to play a man short for much of the match as fullback Brian Crane picked up his second yellow card, and a subsequent ejection, early in the second half. Crane had received the first caution in the waning minutes of the first half, and when he dragged down a Panther attacker to prevent an FIU breakaway, he was thrown out of the game.
The Panthers gained new life after Crane was sent off, and almost 15 minutes after the ejection, FIU capitalized on the man advantage. Ignace Moleka, one-third of the Panthers' high-scoring trio, received a left-side pass from Bayete Smith and, from 10 yards out, knocked a shot past Lagerwey in the 62nd minute to give FIU the lead.
But the Panthers couldn't make it stand up.
"They suffered a little letdown when they scored," Rennie said. "They probably thought the game was over."
Jason Kreis, as has been his habit all year, made sure it wasn't finished. It took only four minutes for Duke to pull out the equalizer. After a defensive foul near the FIU goal box, Kreis drove a direct kick past goalie Jeff Cassar from 20 yards out to tie the score. The goal was the 39th of Kreis' career, tying him with current Duke assistant Chris Yankee for sixth on the school's all-time goal-scoring list.
"Coach [David] Smyth and I looked at each other and said, `We've got to have [a goal] right here'," Rennie said. "That [goal] lifted our spirits quite a bit."
Neither team could forge ahead in regulation, and a pair of weary teams trudged into the extra session. But it didn't take long for the Blue Devils to net the game-winner.
Just over two minutes into OT, little-used freshman Steve Maynard played a short corner kick to junior Bobby Moghim, who deked one defender and sent a cross to Matt Shattuck. The freshman striker scored his second goal in three postseason games with a header that eluded Cassar.
"It was a great play," Rennie said.
For the remainder of overtime, the undermanned Blue Devils packed it in on defense, not wanting to get into a track meet with the cat-quick Panthers.
"They had tremendous speed up front," Rennie said. "We didn't want to make it an end-to-end game at that point."
The strategy paid off, as FIU could not create any major scoring chances to tie the game. A prime reason for the Panthers' offensive impotence was that national scoring leader Steve Ralston was limited to one shot on goal all day, as Duke junior Craig Jeidy was the main factor in stifling the usually torrid FIU juggernaut.
"Craig Jeidy played [Ralston] a lot of the time when we went a man down," Rennie said. "Judd Willmann came in and did a great job playing sweeper."
Two players who had not seen much action this year, Maynard and sophomore Michael Dunne, came in to make key contributions.
"Everybody that played, played extremely well," Rennie said.
Duke now must hope for a home game when it faces No. 10 James Madison in the second round. The Dukes cruised to a 3-0 road win over No. 11 North Carolina in their first contest.
The game will most likely be played on Sunday, Nov. 27.
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