Sunday brought yet another win and another shutout for Duke.
The top-seeded Blue Devils (18-3-1) defeated Lehigh (15-2-3), 3-0, to advance to the quarterfinals of the NCAA College Cup. In doing so against the Mountain Hawks, Duke has now held its opponents scoreless for four straight contests.
Although the first minutes of the game were spent with the two teams battling back and forth in the midfield, Duke capitalized on a scoring opportunity in the 20th minute to take a lead it would never relinquish.
After the ball was knocked out of bounds by a Mountain Hawk player, sophomore Darrius Barnes launched a throw in toward the box from the right sideline. Junior Michael Videira was poised and ready. As the ball dropped in front of the goal, the midfielder headed it up and over the fingers of the leaping Lehigh keeper into the top right corner of the net.
"It was great, because Paul [Dudley] was in there was well, and he went up for the first few, and we decided to switch," Videira said. "Paul kept three guys on him, and I was able to go one-on-one with one of their defenders and just got a piece of it at the right time."
A little more than seven minutes later, the Blue Devils penetrated deep into the Mountain Hawk zone and knocked in another goal.
Zach Pope pressured a ball in the midfield, forcing a turnover on a pass that Videira intercepted. The junior connected with Spencer Wadsworth, who traded a give-and-go pass with Mike Grella 15 yards outside the box. Wadsworth turned and blasted a shot that deflected off Lehigh goalie Jim Morahan's fingers and into the goal, putting Duke up by two.
"I think what happened is it kind of curved a little bit when I hit the volley," Wadsworth said of his shot. "The goalie was kind of moving one way, and it curved at the end and hit his hand and went in."
The Mountain Hawks seemed to lose their intensity in the second period, as the Blue Devils outshot their opponents, 11-3, in the half and controlled the midfield as well as the tempo of the game. Duke had 10 shots on goal for the game, compared to Lehigh's two.
"They were very, very difficult, particularly early in the game," Duke head coach John Rennie said. "We certainly were not outplaying them at that point, but it cost them a lot of energy. And after about 15 or 20 minutes, you could see they weren't going to be able to do that for 90 minutes."
Just more than 20 minutes into the second half, the Blue Devils tacked on another goal. Junior Tomek Charowski stole a Mountain Hawk pass in the center of the field and sent a ball to Grella on the top right corner of the box. The sophomore passed his defender to face the goalie one-on-one and chipped the ball over the keeper's head from 12 yards out for his team-leading 13th goal of the season.
Next, Duke takes on UCLA Sunday. The Bruins defeated Clemson 3-0 to advance in the tournament.
"We have a lot of confidence going to the elite eight," Videira said. "We know that we are a great team, so we're just trying to stay humble going in now because there's upsets happening all around us all the time."
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