Coaches hate talking about it, gamblers love banking on it, and according to Red Sox fans, Boston is doomed never to find it (thanks to Babe Ruth).
The game is luck, and it seems to have eluded the Duke women's soccer team all season long. But as the Blue Devils suffered their third straight ACC overtime loss to a nationally ranked team this past Saturday evening, coach Robbie Church and his players can only look ahead, as they take on the N.C. State Wolfpack at 7 p.m. Wednesday night at the WRAL Soccer Complex in Raleigh.
"We probably don't want to see overtime any more this season," Church jokingly said. "We really have been unlucky this year. We have not had a lot of breaks or a lot of luck up to this point. If we can just be more effective in attacking, we won't even have to go into overtime."
Though the team has suffered its share of setbacks, Church was quick to point out that it is not all about luck. Even though the last three losses--all by one point apiece to No. 11 Clemson, No. 14 Florida State, and most recently to No. 13 Virginia--could have gone either way in the final moments, the team still had room for improvement in the extra session.
"Maybe we get a little too conservative," he noted. "It seemed like in all three of those games, at the end of regulation, we were on the attack. Then when we take the five-minute break--like in the Virginia game--we come out not as aggressive. We have to have the mindset of going out and scoring the golden goal.
"You make your own luck, though. The last goal on Sunday was not luck, we just didn't clear the ball. A quality side like Virginia will score that."
One of the positives from the Virginia game, however, was Duke's lone goal, scored by Kasey Truman. Truman, in just her third game back from a knee injury which has sidelined her all season, got the ball in a scramble in front of the Virginia goal and punched it in for her first points of the season.
"It was obviously a great feeling, and it was a great goal to score too," Truman said. "Scoring on set plays was one of my strengths, so it felt like part of me was actually back physically."
The loss dropped Duke to 5-8 on the season and an even more disappointing 0-5 in the ACC, far below the lofty expectations for such a solid team on paper coming into the season. But, with two games left in ACC play and a winnable match versus Vanderbilt to wrap up the season, an NCAA berth is still not out of the question.
"This year, we have just been really unlucky," junior Alison Sanders said. "It's not about the character of our team. We've been unlucky, but we can't be this unlucky for the rest of the season. When we meet these teams again in the ACC tournament, there is no way they are gong to beat us twice. They're not that lucky."
NCSU is coming off a match Sunday in which it lost on the road 3-1 to Clemson. The loss snapped the Wolfpack's 5-game winning streak and dropped them to 7-6 overall and 0-4 in ACC play.
Last year, Duke utterly dominated the Wolfpack for 75 minutes before collapsing in the last 15 minutes. N.C. State scored all three of its goals in that final time span to steal a 3-1 victory from the hosting Blue Devils. Duke outshot the Wolfpack 22-6 for the game and an amazing 13-0 in the first half, but just could not put the game away.
"N.C. State is a tricky team because you always underestimate them, and then they come out and [win]," Sanders said. "But I feel bad for them this year because we're going to come out and control them."
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