After playing one solid half in their home opener against Butler last weekend, the No. 13 Blue Devils (1-0) will look to play two good halves this Saturday against the University of Maryland at Baltimore County (0-0) at 1 p.m. in Koskinen Stadium.
Duke defeated Butler 12-8 in its first action of the season, but the team did not play up to expectations.
“We were up big at half, a nice 8-2 lead,” head coach Mike Pressler said. “[We] just didn’t finish it in the third quarter and allowed Butler to hang around.”
This game marks a rematch of last year’s season opener—a contest that Duke won 11-8. Both teams bring new players to the field this year, most notably Duke freshman Zach Greer.
The team would love an encore performance from Greer, who scored four goals in his first collegiate game.
“Zach is going to have a huge contribution, week in and week out,” sophomore Matt Danowski said. “He is going to put the ball in the goal.”
Duke will also look for freshman midfielder Brad Ross to control the faceoffs against UMBC—Duke won only 5-of-22 faceoffs last year. Fortunately for the Blue Devils, UMBC graduated senior faceoff extraordinaire Pat Muston.
“The key loss for them is Muston,” Pressler said. “We were very fortunate to score 11 a year ago when we didn’t even have the ball.”
The Blue Devils will look to knife through an inexperienced UMBC defense. The newly formed combination of Greer and Danowski will be flanked by sophomore Peter Lamade and junior co-captain Matt Zash, who combined for five goals and two assists last weekend.
This UMBC team relies heavily on offense. Junior Brendan Mundorf led the attack last year with 48 points. He returns along with the other two leading scorers from last year’s team, junior James Hyland and sophomore Drew Westervelt.
“We will have our hands full with their attack,” Blue Devil co-captain Bill Gerrish said. “It is the strong point of their team. Hopefully we can stymie them.”
This game pits two long tenured coaches against each other. UMBC head coach Don Zimmerman has been with the program for 12 years, after leading Johns Hopkins to three national championships in the 1980s. This season marks Pressler’s 15th year with the Blue Devils.
Both coaches have turned mediocre teams into contenders, but Pressler has won all five head-to-head matchups.
“We don’t know much about them, but we do not know much about ourselves either,” Pressler said.
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