For three of the four quarters of Saturday's game against No. 2 Virginia, the men's lacrosse team proved that it is capable of playing with any team in the country. Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, there was the second quarter.
The Cavaliers (8-2, 3-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) outlasted the third-ranked Blue Devils 17-14 Saturday on a rain-soaked afternoon at Duke Lacrosse Stadium. The win gave Virginia the regular-season ACC title, while the Blue Devils (7-2, 2-1 in the ACC) finished the conference regular season in second place.
The Cavaliers earned the victory behind a dominant second quarter performance in which they shut out the Blue Devils 8-0. The period started out slowly for both teams after a fast-paced first quarter ended in a 5-5 draw. Neither team was able to find the back of the net until the 10:51 mark of the period, when Virginia attackman Drew McKnight scored on a pass from Jay Jalbert in transition to give the Cavaliers a 6-5 lead.
McKnight's goal opened up the floodgates for the Virginia attack, the nation's leading scoring offense. First-team All-American attackman Doug Knight got a ball to roll slowly into the Duke goal 1:21 after McKnight's tally to increase UVa's lead to 7-5. The Cavaliers scored again at the 7:11 mark on a pass from McKnight to midfielder Michael Leahy, then scored again only eight seconds later when middie Drew Melchionni took a faceoff straight to the goal to increase the UVa lead to four. Duke coach Mike Pressler quickly called a timeout to try to slow the Virginia attack, but the onslaught could not be halted.
"I think we just had a couple of breakdowns and they started to string some goals together, win some faceoffs," senior midfielder Jim Gonnella said. "With a high-powered offense, that can happen.... They kind of play an unsettled game and we got into their game. Things were happening pretty quickly."
The Cavaliers scored four more times in the period, including two man-up goals and an acrobatic finish by Knight on a pass in front from Jalbert. UVa finished off its near-perfect quarter with 11 seconds left on a goal by Tucker Radebaugh from Knight to put them up 13-5. Virginia's eight goals in the quarter exceeded Duke's average of 7.1 goals allowed per game.
"Things just seemed to begin to click for us a little bit," Virginia coach Dom Starsia said. "We just seemed to be able to convert on every offensive opportunity. We started to make some plays on the defensive end. It seemed like we had the ball the whole quarter. We're a team that when we possess the ball, we can usually generate some things offensively."
Despite the daunting odds facing them, the Blue Devils refused to give up after their disastrous second quarter. The Duke attack came out on fire to start the second half, as senior attackman Scott Allen scored in front just 43 seconds into the third quarter. Freshman middie Nick Hartofilis found the back of the net 13 seconds later to narrow the UVa lead to six.
Virginia was able to temporarily slow Duke's comeback attempt, holding the Blue Devils scoreless for five minutes and notching a goal of their own at the 9:39 mark on a pass from Jalbert to Knight, one of Knight's four goals on the day. However, the Blue Devils quickly picked up where they had left off, as junior attackamn John Fay scored one of his three goals on the afternoon at 8:53, then Allen bounced one home 29 seconds later to make it a five-goal game.
The Duke scoring rampage continued at the 5:52 mark, when freshman attackman T.J. Durnan scored on a feed in front from Gonnella. Duke cut its deficit to three with 3:55 remaining in the quarter when Gonnella sliced through the UVa defense, spinning and face-dodging past onlooking defenders to shoot it home while getting crunched by the UVa defense.
Sophomore middie Scott Diggs finished off the Blue Devils' third quarter scoring with 1:16 left, shooting the ball between between goalie Chris Sanderson's legs to reduce Virginia's seemingly safe lead to 14-12.
"With it at 13-5 at halftime, we knew we were still in it if we can get our transition game going and start putting some shots on cage," Pressler said. "I'm proud of my guys. We got all out of whack in the second quarter, we settled down at halftime and we came back swinging."
Duke appeared on track to make a run for the lead as the quarter wound to a close. After a subpar, nerve-wracking quarter, the Cavaliers slowed Duke's momentum with 11 seconds left when Knight fed McKnight on a backcut to increase UVa's lead back to three.
"You knew Duke was going to make their run at us," Starsia said. "I hoped it wasn't going to be quite as precarious as it was. We were quite concerned. We came up with a big goal at the end of the third quarter that really heped us going into the fourth quarter. I think then we got the game back under control again."
The Cavaliers quickly built on McKnight's goal in the fourth quarter, as Jalbert scored his third goal of the day on a drive to the cage at 12:58, then Knight scored on a pass from McKnight 19 seconds later to return UVa's lead to five, 17-12.
Despite the swing in momentum, Duke was not done fighting. The Blue Devils pressured the Virginia goal throughout the quarter, but had difficulty getting the ball past Sanderson, who came up with a number of clutch saves. Fay peppered Sanderson with shots, but was unable to get the ball past him. Duke was only able to score twice more, once by senior Ed Fay with 7:50 to go, then a final goal by sophomore middie John O'Donnell with five seconds remaining, as the Cavaliers held on for the win.
"In the third quarter, I was a little bit concerned whether or not [Sanderson] was seeing the ball as well as he did earlier in the game," Starsia said. "Late in the fourth quarter, he turned back everything they had. If you stop John Fay on three or four breakaways, you're really doing something. John Fay is a heck of a finisher. I don't know what the outcome is like if Chris doesn't play like that near the end."
The loss ended the Blue Devils' five-game winning streak, and secured them a first round matchup with Maryland in this weekend's ACC Tournament. Despite the loss and their disappointing play in the second quarter, the Blue Devils were pleased with their showing in the second half and are eager to get back out on the field against the Terps.
"We came back," Gonnella said. "It's hard to get going in the second half when you're down eight goals. I think we showed a lot of heart coming back, and we fought them until the end. That's only going to help us in the long run."
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