Although the Duke academic year ended in early May, a majority of the spring sports teams' seasons extended into the summer. Duke enjoyed its best-ever spring season as women's tennis and women's lacrosse advanced to the Final Four and men's tennis and men's lacrosse advanced to the national quarterfinals. In addition, women's golf took home a national championship.
Women's Lacrosse: Duke erased an 8-3 deficit and snagged an impressive 11-10 come-from-behind victory over James Madison to advance to the Final Four in just the program's fourth year in existence.
But the magic was gone at the Final Four in Baltimore, as the Blue Devils lost to Virginia for the third time this season, this time by the score of 9-8. The game was evenly matched, but a few Duke mistakes at critical moments proved to be the difference.
"We're a young team and I think we made some crucial mistakes that you can't afford to make against a really good team like Virginia," coach Kerstin Kimel said. "Virginia's a tournament-experienced team and they capitalized on our mistakes.... I don't think it was the Cavaliers who beat us; I felt we beat ourselves."
Virginia took an early 5-2 lead, but the Blue Devils responded with a 3-0 run bridging the two halves. Virginia broke the tie and never lost the lead again, successfully keeping Duke at bay. Duke had a few late chances to tie the game, but when Cavalier defender Stephy Samaras forced All-American Tricia Martin to turn the ball over with 1:19 left, the game was lost.
Virginia was particularly effective down the stretch, keeping the Blue Devils just out of reach. The Cavaliers are now a perfect 7-0 against Duke in the history of the rivalry.
And although they couldn't get the win, for the Blue Devils, just getting there was an accomplishment in itself.
"It's been an amazing four years," senior Meghan McLaughlin said. "We've come a long way since that 3-12 season my freshman year. Just to be able to come to this point, especially knowing where we were freshman year, it's been a great trip."
Women's Tennis: Duke advanced to the Final Four again, but once again came up short of that elusive national championship. The Blue Devils fell to Florida 5-2 in the national semifinals in Gainesville, Fla. It was Duke's 22nd loss to the Gators in 23 tries.
Duke took two of the first three singles matches and as the remaining three contests went into a third set, it looked like the Blue Devils had a chance to pull off the upset.
But Karen Goldstein, Erica Biro and Kathy Sell all lost in the third set. The Blue Devils would have to sweep all three doubles matches to win, and that dream died when Vanessa Webb and Goldstein lost at No. 1 doubles, 8-6.
"It's extremely hard to handle because I am a real goal-oriented person," Webb said. "The reason I came to Duke was to help win their first national title, and I didn't do that. I really feel like I failed in that respect."
In singles action, Webb failed to defend her NCAA title, losing in the third round of this year's tournament. The graduated senior was stunned in the round of 16, losing to Georgia's Vanessa Castellano, a player she had beaten in dual-match play earlier in the year.
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Webb closed out her stellar Duke career when she and Goldstein were knocked out of the doubles tournament by Amy Jensen and Amanda Augustus. The duo from California upset Duke's second-ranked team with a 6-4, 6-1 win in the semifinals.
Men's Lacrosse: Although the Blue Devils seemed poised to advance to their second Final Four, they fell short in a 17-14 upset loss to Georgetown. Duke's defense faltered and gave up more than 10 goals for the first time all season and the Blue Devils were eliminated from the quarterfinals for the second straight year.
"Giving up 17 goals is amazing to me," coach Mike Pressler said. "I didn't think there was a team in the country that could score 17 goals on us."
The Hoyas scored five unanswered goals in a span of less than eight minutes during the fourth quarter, giving Georgetown a 17-10 lead with 4:15 left in the game. Duke rallied back with four unanswered goals, but the lead was insurmountable.
In late March the two teams played in a game which Duke won, 10-8. With the win, the Blue Devils became a perfect 12-0 lifetime against the Hoyas. But the post-season matchup was remarkably different.
"There was no magic for us today," Pressler said. "They whipped us in every phase of the game. Georgetown whipped Duke today and they did it in the things we take pride in."
Men's Tennis: Duke missed out on the chance to advance to its first-ever Final Four in a devastating 4-3 loss to LSU in the NCAA quarterfinals. The match came down to No. 2 singles between Doug Root and the Tigers' Tom Hand. Although Root saved several match points, he was unable to pull out the win, dropping a dramatic 6-7, 6-4, 6-4 decision to Hand.
"Root has won a lot of big matches for us," coach Jay Lapidus said. "He's definitely one of the guys I'd like to have out there in that situation."
At the 1998 Milwaukee Classic, Root pulled out a come-from-behind win to defeat Hand in three sets, fighting off several match points. But this time around, Hand prevailed.
Pedro Escudero, Ramsey Smith and Andres Pedroso each won their singles matches in easy straight-set decisions, but Duke was forced to play from behind when it dropped the doubles point for just the third time all year.
The loss snapped the Blue Devils' school-record 19-match winning streak and brought an end to thoughts of a Final Four and possible national championship.
"I feel this is the best team we've [ever] had," Lapidus said. "I thought we had a legitimate chance to win it [all]."
Baseball: Baseball concluded its dismal 24-31 season with a 4-3 loss to Maryland in the play-in game of the ACC tournament. Stephen Cowie, pitching in his final collegiate game, struck out 11 and gave up just three earned runs, but the Blue Devil bats struggled against Maryland lefty Tom Curtiss.
But bigger news came a few weeks later when Athletics Director Joe Alleva announced the firing of head coach Steve Traylor, who had been with the Blue Devils for 12 years.
"I think Steve did a good job getting our program where it is," Alleva said. "But I just felt like the program wasn't going anywhere. We needed to be more competitive. I felt like we needed a change."
Traylor's replacement is former Duke pitching coach Bill Hillier, who has spent the last five years as the head man at UNC-Asheville. Ironically, it was Traylor who hired Hillier in 1988.
Hillier is known as an outstanding recruiter and Alleva believes the new coach will be able to attract a lot of talented players to Durham. Hillier hopes to inject a new attitude into the baseball program, an attitude where hard work and discipline are emphasized. He contacted his new players by phone and told them to be in the best shape of their lives when they return to Durham in August.
"We'll be at it every day in practice, and they'll be pumped to play," Hillier said. "No matter who we're going up against, they're going to have the attitude that we're going to war and we're going out there to win."
Track: It was quite a summer for graduated senior Jesse Allen, who competed at the NCAAs and the USA Track & Field Championships.
The summer began when he won Duke's first IC4A title since 1971, finishing the 400-meter hurdles in 49.42 seconds. That mark was the fastest time by a collegian all year at that point and was a one-and-a-half second improvement on his previous best before the meet.
At the NCAAs, Allen added 0.5 seconds to his time and finished in fourth place at the NCAA Championships in Boise, Idaho. And while his finish still earned him All-America honors, Allen feels he should have done better after cruising through the preliminaries.
"I didn't run my best race in the finals," he said. "I cruised through the preliminaries, and [winner Bayano] Kamani ran a great race, but I still feel I should have finished in second."
At the USATF Championships in Eugene, Ore., wearing a Duke uniform for the last time, Allen advanced to the semifinals with a time of 49.68. But in the semifinals, although his time improved to 49.58, Allen finished fifth and failed to advance to the finals.
Men's Golf: The Blue Devils finished in sixth place at the East Regionals, earning themselves a surprise bid to the NCAA Championships in Chaska, Minn. But a disastrous first round at the NCAAs halted any chance of a Cinderella run.
Duke shot a 23-over 311 on the first day, leaving itself in 27th place out of 30 teams. The next day was much kinder, but the Blue Devils' 303 was still not enough to make the 36-hole cut.
"We figured if we had a really good round, single digits over par, we could possibly make the cut," coach Rod Myers said. "We had the sixth best round of the day, but we just didn't do it. We knew we buried ourselves in a hole after that first day."
Duke finished in 18th place, missing the cut by six strokes. But freshman Matt Krauss played well enough to continue the tournament as an individual. He made the most of the opportunity, finishing in 12th place.
And despite the disappointing team play, for a squad that was on the verge of not qualifying for Regionals, 18th place was not bad at all.
"I thought it was a very positive experience for us," Myers said. "From where we were at the start of the year, we've come a long way."
- Compiled by Neal Morgan
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