CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - For the first 23 minutes Saturday night, the Duke-Virginia lacrosse was looking like, well, the Duke-Virginia series.
A hard-fought contest with the ACC regular season on the line, it seemed to all that this one would end like the last four games in the series have-in games decided by two goals or less.
But then something came dramatically undone.
With the game knotted at 2-2 with seven minutes left in the half, No. 2 Virginia exploded for five unanswered goals en route to a 12-7 win Saturday night in Klockner Stadium. The win gave the Cavs (8-1, 3-0 in the ACC) the regular season ACC title and ended Duke's (8-3, 2-1) dreams of its first-ever undefeated ACC season.
"That quarter set the tone for the rest of the game," defenseman Steve Card said. "They were getting every call, every ground ball, every loose one, one shot went in off someone's stick.... Every single facet of the game went their way in the second quarter."
During the crucial seven-minute run, the Cavaliers took advantage of nearly every Blue Devil mistake, which were plentiful. The Wahoos scored on two extra-man opportunities-they had four for the game-and made the most out of several careless Blue Devil turnovers.
"We didn't deserve to win today," coach Mike Pressler said. "We had to have our A game, and we had our C
Virginia's Conor Gill scored a goal and assisted on two others during the spurt. Meanwhile, the Blue Devils' high-powered attack was held in check by defensive standouts Ryan Curtic and Mark Koontz. But while the two defensemen played well, most of Duke's offensive woes stemmed from its inability to maintain possession of the ball.
"It's not surprising [we only scored two first half goals] considering we didn't have the ball the whole second quarter," attackman T.J. Durnan said. "We got in foul trouble, and when we had the ball, we threw it away. We threw it at people's feet and they couldn't handle it."
But the Blue Devils came out inspired in the third quarter, simply dominating time of possession in the early going. Duke scored three straight goals to close the gap to 7-5, and it looked as if the Duke-Virginia series was back to the way it used to be.
"We felt we were in it even down five going into halftime," Card said. "We never thought we were out of it.... I'm proud of the way we fought back."
But with the lead trimmed to two, Chris Hartofilis had possession of the ball as Duke threatened to score again. But Hartofilis threw a bad pass to older brother Nick and the Cavaliers got the ball back. Virginia sprinted down the field and Ian Shore came off a screen and promptly put UVa up 8-5 with his only goal of the game.
"They took advantage of our mistakes," Pressler said. "We fight our rear end off, score three in a row to open the third to get back in the game and we beat ourselves. Virginia's that good a team, they're going to take advantage of those mistakes."
The Cavaliers scored again with 16 seconds left in the period and the game was once again out of reach for the Blue Devils, who were outshot 50-32 in the game. With the loss, the Blue Devils clinched the No. 2 seed in this weekend's ACC tournament and will face tournament host, third-seeded Maryland Friday night.
If both Duke and Virginia were to win, it would mark the second straight year that the two teams faced off for the regular season title the week before facing off for the ACC tournament title.
And while Duke's players were already talking about the chance for revenge, Saturday night is a night the Blue Devils won't soon forget.
"I think every aspect of our game was sloppy tonight," Durnan said. "They capitalized on every one of our mistakes. You can't do that against a team like Virginia.... We got out ground-balled, out hustled. We just didn't play as hard as we should have."
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