WINSTON SALEM -- There is a saying that surrounds ACC basketball: It is difficult to beat a team twice in a season, and it is extremely difficult to defeat that same team three times in a season.
The 10th ranked ranked field hockey team proved that yesterday afternoon in Winston-Salem, as the Blue Devils stretched Wake Forest to its limits before falling 2-0 to the Demon Deacons--their third loss to Wake Forest this season--in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
The loss, which came right after Duke's win over James Madison in the first round Saturday, the school's first NCAA tournament victory since 1992, ended the Blue Devils' season at 14-9 and catapulted the Demon Deacons into the Final Four.
When Sunday's game had ended, head coach Liz Tchou said she was pleased was with her team's performance in the game proud of her team's play on the season overall.
"Wake Forest is a great team, and I was just ecstatic that we held them to 0-0 in the first half," Tchou said. "It was just a real hard-fought game. I wished we had a couple more opportunities as far as penalty corners go-our corners were looking really good. But I'm really proud of the team. We came a long way and improved over the season. We ended up playing some really good hockey. I'm happy with the overall season. It was great."
The game, played in unseasonally cold temperatures Sunday afternoon, remained tied at 0-0 until Wake Forest's Maeke Boreel got by Duke's freshmen goalie Christy Morgan on a backhanded shot that beat Morgan to the far post from about six yards out midway through the second half. The Demon Deacons added an insurance goal when Boreel scored her second of game just five minutes later.
The first half was dominated by Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons outshot the Blue Devils 6-1 in the period and kept the ball in Duke's territory for almost all of the 35 minutes of play. Duke's best chance came in the last minutes on a penalty corner, but the Blue Devils mishandled the injection.
Wake Forest was able to defeat Duke behind the strength of its defense, which held the Blue Devils to three shots on the day and, with the exception of a couple of penalty corners including two desperate ones late in the game, shut down Duke's three leading scorers, freshmen Katie Grant, junior Kim Van Kirk, and sophomore Johanna Bischof, who accounted for virtually half of the team's points this season. The Demon Deacons spread the Blue Devils out and did not let them clog the middle of the field like they did in their ACC tournament semifinal game last week according to Wake Forest head coach Jennifer Averill.
By the end of the game, both teams appeared to show the effects of playing on Wake Forest's astroturf for two days straight and of combating the weather all weekend. Averill compared playing two games on Wake Forest's field to playing "twenty games on the moon."
Saturday's game against James Madison featured not cold weather, but very wet weather. During timeouts and halftime, the puddles on the field at Wake Forest's Kenter Stadium had to be swept away. The bad conditions favored the Blue Devils, though, according to Tchou.
"We like that turf wet," she said. "It's more fast, and it caters to us, especially our forward speed."
Indeed, the speed inducing astroturf did help the Blue Devils. They scored two goals, one by Van Kirk and one by sophomore Chrissie Murphy. Murphy's goal was the game winner, as she finished off a Grant cross after Grant wove down the right side of the field.
The Dukes pressed the Blue Devils in the second half but were turned away by Duke's defense, led by the freshman Morgan, who recorded several spectacular saves, including one diving block on a hard shot to her side which led Tchou to say of her goalie "no fear."
"It is great having her back there," senior captain Sarah Wright said. "She has great reflexes. She can be great for three more years."
And while Morgan and the rest of the freshmen have three years left at Duke, the loss to Wake Forest ended not only Duke's season, but it also ended the careers of three Blue Devil seniors, Wright, Chrissy Ashley and Erica Perrier. All of the Blue Devil players and coaches lamented the loss of the three.
"They all contributed to the team in different ways," junior Kim Gogola said. "The team's personality changes without them here. They have all helped change the program and made it better. Any success we have in the future, we owe to them. We will miss them all next year."
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