By JONATHAN GANZ
The winning goal was a lucky shot, but the outcome was never really in doubt as the women's soccer team defeated North Carolina-Greensboro 3-2 on Tuesday night.
The Blue Devils watched the Spartans score twice in the last 26 minutes of the game to cut Duke's lead to one. But Duke's heartbeat and blood pressure barely rose at all as it continued to dominate play after momentary lapses on both goals.
"I don't think we had any trouble with them," Blue Devil head coach Bill Hempen said. "That was the most one-sided one-goal game I've been involved with. I have no idea how many chances [UNC-G] had, but their percentage was a lot higher than ours."
The Spartans made it a one-goal game with 7:41 left when Susie Williams lofted a free kick into the box from 35 yards out on the right side. Spartan Amy Gray ran onto the pass and headed it over Duke goalie Dana Piper, who had come too far out of goal in an attempt to snare the incoming pass.
Hempen's reaction was simply to put starters Mandy Lehr and Kristy Whelchel back in the game. He watched as the Blue Devils righted themselves and regained control for the rest of the game.
"Certainly when [UNC-G] scored, they got pumped up," Hempen said. "And we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I'm not sure if that's the right word. But we were not sure of ourselves all of a sudden. Once we gained control of the game, we had some more chances."
Duke outshot the Spartans 26-9 on the game. It continually peppered the UNC-G goal all night, but was unable to touch the back of the net more than thrice. A further indication of how much the Blue Devils dominated the game was the fact that they took 14 corner kicks, while the Spartans took zero.
The winning goal came a little more than five minutes into the second half on one of those 14 corner kicks. Lining the ball up from the right side, Lehr hit it with her left foot and put enough spin on it to cause it to curve into the back left side of the UNC-G goal, eluding Spartan goalie Paula Domitrovits.
"No, I wasn't trying to score," Lehr said. "I was just trying to make it to the far post. But I guess I must have been a bit off-balance, and it curved right in."
In the first half, Duke was even more dominant. Starting goalkeeper Melissa Carr was really tested only twice and touched the ball no more than 10 times.
Senior All-American Kelly Walbert also put on her own personal highlight show. She continually beat the Spartan defenders, using an array of fakes and moves with her head and feet.
Duke's first goal came less than 10 minutes into the game, when a corner kick from the left side went through the goal box without being touched and senior Missy Durham half-volleyed the ball right back across the box. It ricocheted off the left post into the goal.
Not five minutes later, Walbert beat a UNC-G defender down the left side and left a cross on the ground right in front of the goal. Running onto the ball for a one-touch goal was junior Mandy Manzanares. That made the score 2-0 less than 15 minutes into the game.
"[This game] was a lot different in that we had control of the game," Hempen said. "That was one of the things that maybe we hadn't had before. We played pretty good tonight. 3-2 doesn't necessarily show that you've played well. But I thought that we played as well as we have in a long while."
For the first time all year the Blue Devils had three different players score in a game. That bodes well for a team that entered the night with Walbert leading the team in goals with 13, and the next closest player being Andi Melde at four.
"It was kind of nice for me to be able to distribute the ball a little bit more tonight, instead of concentrating on scoring," Walbert said. "We had three different people score tonight, and that's always such a positive thing for any team to have more numbers of people scoring."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.