In what has been an up and down kind of year for the Duke field hockey team, the Blue Devils are looking to finish on a high note as they travel to College Park, Md., for this weekend's Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
Duke will have a chance to get revenge on many of its ACC rivals this weekend. Despite their 9-11 overall record this year, the Blue Devils lost all but one of their eight conference games in the regular season.
The Blue Devils enter the ACC Championship as the fifth seed. No. 1 North Carolina, No. 3 Maryland, No. 9 Virginia and No. 14 Wake Forest are the four other participants in this weekend's tournament.
Duke will meet the fourth-seeded Demon Deacons (11-6, 2-6) today at 2 p.m. in the first round. The winner of that game will advance to face the undefeated North Carolina Tar Heels at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Virginia and Maryland will play in the other semifinal contest. The championship match will be played on Sunday at 1 p.m.
Duke can afford to do no looking ahead, however, as Wake Forest has won the first two meetings between the two this year. Early in the year at Winston-Salem, the Demon Deacons won handily, 2-0. In the second game, the two squads went to overtime to decide a winner--Wake won 3-2. In that contest, though, Duke was leading 2-0 until halfway through the second half.
Because of recent battles between the two, this matchup has developed into a bitter rivalry. Junior defender Lynn Schoenherr believes that the Blue Devils will have some extra motivation when they face the Demon Deacons.
"Personally, I hate [Wake Forest] so much, and I think the rest of the team does too," Schoenherr said. "In my freshman year, we beat them, but ever since then we have lost."
Duke is hoping it can take advantage of this frustration by playing an aggressive style of field hockey. In this scheme, ACC scoring leader Melissa Panasci is more active in the offense--she uses her speed to go around defenders, rather than trying to use her strength to go through her opposition. This allows Panasci's teammates to get her the ball in a better position. Once Panasci gets the ball, she knows what to do with it--she set the all-time ACC season scoring mark with her 31st goal in last weekend's game against Maryland. But it is winning, not scoring, that drives Panasci.
Panasci and her teammates feel that a win over Wake Forest is imminent.
"We are a better team than Wake," Panasci said. "We have peaked late in the season, and we are ready to go out and show everybody that we belong in the same class as the other teams in this conference."
Pride is the team's incentive for the weekend, as Duke has no shot at an at-large bid for the NCAA Tournament. Instead, the Tar Heels, Terrapins, Cavaliers and Demon Deacons are all expected to represent the conference in the NCAAs. This gives the Blue Devils all the more reason to put in a good appearance at the ACC tournament.
This weekend marks the end of five successful careers--Tamara Gehris, Heather Moles, Nicole Osmers, Patience Harrison and Margaret Salisbury will all be playing in their final games at Duke. This is yet another reason to play hard during the tournament.
"We're really going to miss the seniors next year," said Panasci. "They are not only great players, but they are also close friends. It would mean a lot to all of us if we played well."
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