The same spunk, the same swagger and, yes, the same relentless running drills were all present yesterday afternoon when the men's soccer team held its first practice since returning home from a weekend trip to Fort Wayne, Ind.
A few of the 1,200-plus fans in attendance at the 2000 Soccer Showcase and all 26 Blue Devils were left disappointed Saturday when Duke's loss to Rutgers in an exhibition game prevented a clash with No. 1 Indiana in Sunday's finale. Instead of the Hoosiers, the Blue Devils crushed Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne 8-0 Sunday in what was more an exhibition of Duke's talent than an "exhibition game."
Not exactly a marquis match-up, although freshman Danny Wymer probably wasn't complaining about his opportunity to score the first four goals of his career.
Perhaps some of the fans were even murmuring something about how coach John Rennie should have pushed harder for a chance to size up the Hoosiers first-hand by sending out his A-team rather than playing nine substitutes Saturday. But they would have entirely been missing the point behind last weekend.
"We certainly played to win against Rutgers, but that's not the main reason you play exhibition games," Rennie said. "We didn't want to do anything at the expense of getting playing time and experience for some guys."
Yet, while even Duke's stars only played about 60 minutes Saturday, Rutgers' entire first team was on the field for the entire 90-minute game.
Maybe that's why back on campus yesterday, the talk and certainly the walk of the Duke players made it look as if the loss never happened.
If the loss was truly forgotten, though, then the trip might have been a waste. In order to make sure that didn't happen, the Blue Devils, beginning with yesterday's practice, did the one thing they never had the opportunity to do during last season's undefeated run-learn from a loss.
"I said [last week] that I wouldn't mind losing as long as we learned from it, and I think that we have," coach John Rennie said. "A lot of teams this season will play us exactly like Rutgers did. They didn't do a lot of attacking; they sat back and used a defend-and-counter type of game plan. I think that's what we can expect in most of our games this season."
And with lesson No. 1 came lesson No. 2: the way to stop counter-attacks is to avoid bad passes and mental mistakes.
Duke's defense, which Rennie said will be the key to the team's success early in the season, played well enough to shut out IPFW for all 90 minutes during an 8-0 rout Sunday. It also held Rutgers scoreless for much of the game Saturday.
But the Scarlet Knights managed to find a chink in Duke's armor when freshman striker Sherif El Bialy scored on Rutgers' first successful counter. The Blue Devils said that goal and the game-winner in the 72nd minute of play both could have been prevented if the team was more careful.
"They weren't great goals, they were counters," senior midfielder Robert Russell, one of Duke's tri-captains, said. "Those occur when a team is sort of relaxing and has mental lapses.
"We were dominating them in the first half, but we relaxed and just sat back against a real workhorse team."
On to lesson No. 3.
The dominant offense that took the field Sunday against IPFW was far less effective in finding the net Saturday against the Scarlet Knights, but Duke's main offensive weapons say it wasn't for lack of opportunities.
"We created a lot of chances for ourselves, but if anything, we didn't shoot enough," senior forward Ali Curtis said. "That's something that will come when the season starts."
Lesson learned. The Blue Devils came out firing against IPFW and reeled off 22 shots in the game, while still connecting on more than one-third of them.
With much learned from a harmless loss, Duke's weekend trip to Fort Wayne may have been a gain.
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