Last weekend, the women's soccer team had an easy Friday lead-in to its big Sunday game, pummeling the lowly Campbell Fighting Camels before upsetting then-No. 4 Texas. But this weekend was a different story, as No. 8 Duke headed into the Nike Carolina Classic knowing it had a lofty duo on its slate: No. 18 Nebraska and No. 24 Kentucky.
And while the Blue Devils again handled their Friday tune-up with a 3-1 drubbing of the Cornhuskers, handling a second intense match in as many days proved to be a test for Duke in its first try at holding onto a top-10 spot.
The Blue Devils could not hold onto two leads over the physical, and more experienced Wildcats yesterday, and survived a long last day to an even longer weekend, settling for a 2-2 tie after two scintillating overtimes.
"We're still a young team, and you're still going to have some of those games," head coach Robbie Church said. "Especially Sunday games. Sunday games are so tough after putting a lot into Friday games. We just lost focus during the second half."
Indeed, Duke (3-0-1) grabbed a quick lead on Kate Seibert's second goal of the weekend--a header off a free kick from Carolyn Ford--and out-shot Kentucky (2-1-1) in the first half, but then the Blue Devils lacked the burst they showed against Texas.
Whereas Duke came out firing against the Longhorns, collapsing on defense and turning every scoring opportunity into a scoring threat, Church wasn't excited about the Blue Devils' passing or final strikes once they started to beat the defense.
"It was kind of a strange game in the sense that we did have a couple of good opportunities, but we didn't have as many good opportunities," he said. "And I think that's because we didn't possess the ball as well as we did against Texas. We either made a bad decision with the ball or we had a bad touch with the ball. We just were not as crisp and sharp as we've been in some of the games."
So with Duke failing to put up a goal to strengthen the lead, along came the 73rd minute and along came Wildcats star Elizabeth Ramsey, who booted in a 20-footer to tie the game at 1-1.
After the wake-up call, though, Duke struck back 23 seconds later. Ford took over again, booming a a free kick from 20 yards out into the back of the net, giving the Blue Devils another tenuous advantage.
Just over five minutes later, Wildcat Jessica Laswell, who had set up the Ramsey goal, headed in a corner kick past outstretched goalie Kate Straka and tied the game once more.
Straka filled in at goalie for starter Thora Helgadottir, who missed the Kentucky game and will miss Duke's two matches against Oregon State and Washington State next weekend as she plays in World Cup qualifiers with the Iceland National Team, but Church didn't blame her for either goal, saying Straka was "confident" and "composed."
But it was Kentucky that brought confidence and composure to the first overtime, pounding out five shots while Duke couldn't muster one. Laswell even made a heart-stopping shot off the crossbar, leaving Duke inches away from being on the wrong end of another upset.
But Duke recovered, with senior Gwendolyn Oxenham's shot and "We're still a good team, no question about it," Church said. "But we also understand we're a young team, and I think we have to get the mentality now that everybody's going to be coming in shooting at us. And that's different than when any of the girls have played in the past.
"Everybody's going to come and get their best shot against us if we continue to have a high national ranking, if we continue to win. And you have to go through that to understand that as a team. So we'll go through that some during the year."
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