The 14th-ranked Blue Devils kicked off the 2006 season with two solid wins at home this weekend, outscoring their opponents 9-3 in successive 5-2 and 4-1 victories.
"It was a very, very good weekend," head coach John Rennie said. "We scored a lot of goals, got a lot of guys playing time and played really well. In spurts, we were excellent."
Duke's offense was carried by a combination of familiar faces from last year's squad as well as players who the team will count on more this season.
Sunday night was the Mike Grella-Spencer Wadsworth show as the sophomore-junior pair combined for the first two goals of the contest against St. Francis.
First, Grella, who became a presence toward the end of his freshman campaign in 2005, beat his defender and crossed a ball from the right corner of the box to Wadsworth who drilled a shot past the diving goalie into the bottom left corner.
Five minutes later it was Wadsworth, one of Duke's returning leading scorers, with a heel pass in front of the left post to Grella, who blasted a ball into the back of the net for a 2-0 lead.
"Originally I came into school and me and Spencer were supposed to be a really good duo, but it took basically a year to work it out," Grella said. "Now things are starting to get good between us."
Duke (2-0) outshot the Terriers (0-2), 5-1, in the first half, and scored first in the second half as well, with preseason All-American Michael Vidiera heading a cross from Wadsworth over the fingers of the leaping St. Francis goalkeeper with 35 minutes left in the period. Less than 10 minutes later, the Terriers' Giuseppe Buscemi knocked a shot into an open Duke goal after sophomore goalie Brendan Fitzgerald came out of the goal to contest the attacker.
"The best thing about the game was they scored a kind of ping-pong goal, and we just cranked it up a notch and came down and scored two more," Rennie said. "Our guys came back and picked it up to another level."
The win Sunday, capped with a goal from Joe Germanese, marked the first start for Fitzgerald. The goalie recorded 90 minutes of play, one save and one goal against.
"I thought he did very well," Rennie said. "We just need to play more games and get the communication between our defenders and our goalkeepers a little bit."
Duke faced Hartford Friday and got on the board in the 22nd minute with a goal from Germanese, a junior transfer from Vanderbilt.
"Joe's been terrific since day one," Rennie said. "He can score goals, and he works incredibly hard."
Vidiera bounced a goal off the right post to put Duke up, 2-0, before the Hawks responded in the second half to cut the deficit to one.
Vidiera scored his second goal of the game with an assist from Germanese, bouncing a shot off the crossbar and collecting his own rebound to raise the lead to two. Just 31 seconds later, Grella headed a ball from Zack Pope off the crossbar and in to put the Blue Devils on top, 4-1.
Although the teams traded goals in the 75th minute with Wadsworth assisting sophomore Brad Ramsey for his first career goal, Hartford could not get an attack together and the game ended with a Blue Devil win.
"Everybody's playing pretty well," Rennie said. "We're very happy."
Duke hosts the Duke/Adidas Classic next weekend at Koskinen Stadium.
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