The men's soccer team discovered its fate for the next few weekends on Monday night, when it received its fourth consecutive bid to the NCAA tournament. Duke will start the 32-team tournament with a first-round home match against UNC-Greensboro, and the feelings about that were mixed.
"You are obviously happy that you get in the tournament," Duke head coach John Rennie said. "And you're extremely happy that you get to play at home, and the third thing is who you play, and I think that's sort of a good news, bad news kind of a thing because UNC-Greensboro is not a marquee team like South Carolina or a lot of teams.
"But it's their third year in a row they've been in the NCAA tournament, and they have not yet won a game. So they're treating this like World War III, and our players have got to find a way to get ready for that."
Senior Bobby Moghim has seen his share of NCAA tournament draws in his previous three seasons. He said that the team was pleased with the draw they got and felt that they could do well.
Duke has experienced quite a few different draws in past years. In Duke's best performance in recent memory, the 1992 Blue Devils won two matches at home and one on the road before losing to Virginia in the Final Four. The 1993 Duke team did not fare nearly as well, losing to North Carolina at home in the first round. And in a game that still brings back poor memories for the Blue Devils, Duke bowed out of last year's tournament with a second-round loss to James Madison.
After losing to JMU again this season, revenge could finally be Duke's as JMU is in the same bracket as the Blue Devils. If both teams win their first two matches they would meet up in the quarterfinals.
But for now, Duke is only concentrating on its first-round game with UNC-Greensboro. While the Blue Devils have seen this team many times in the past few years in scrimmages, Rennie does not believe that this will be an advantage.
"I think it helps them more than it helps us," Rennie said. "They play enough good teams in-season and out-of-season that they certainly won't be in awe of the ACC or the name of Duke. They play enough good games that they're very familiar with the level of play that's needed to win an NCAA game."
Moghim felt that Duke's draw was deep and the possibilities of different match-ups do seem endless. A first-round win would probably pit Duke against a top-seeded South Carolina team that defeated North Carolina earlier this year on its way to a 15-3 record. After that, the most probable match-ups include either JMU or ACC-foe Maryland. And last but certainly not least, a berth in the Final Four would almost certainly lead to a third match-up this season with No. 1 Virginia.
The Blue Devils believe they have the talent to win it all, but realize that there are many other teams who have that same talent.
"Being here four years, there's been a lot of upsets," Moghim said. "I've seen a lot of teams make the Final Four that didn't have that high a seed. Some are going to have good luck and make it in there, and some will definitely make it like Virginia.
"There are a lot of good teams and anything can happen. There will be some upsets--big upsets, I'm sure of that."
If Duke receives any of that luck which Moghim talked about, the Blue Devils will hopefully be the team doing the upsetting, rather that being the ones upset as Duke felt it was last year.
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