The top-seeded Blue Devils were focused and quietly stretching during the pregame warmups of Sunday's NCAA tournament quarterfinal unseeded Ohio State when the silence was suddenly broken.
Shouting and screaming, the Buckeyes ran out of their locker room and onto the field, sprinting along the midfield line and trash-talking the Duke players. The tactic was meant to get the Blue Devils off their game, but most players didn't even take notice. Some even laughed.
"We encourage that stuff. We think it's almost funny," senior midfielder Ned Crotty said. "We love that...teams that are a bunch of cheerleaders. I think we are too talented of a team to have a bunch of guys talk to us and have that get us off our game."
It didn't take Duke long to prove that.
After Ohio State scored the game's first goal 30 seconds in, the Blue Devils reeled off nine straight markers before the first quarter ended. Duke continued its dominance throughout the contest and Zack Greer registered a career-high 11 points as the Blue Devils rolled over the Buckeyes 21-10 in Ithaca, N.Y.
With the win, Duke (18-1) secured its third trip to the Final Four in the last four years and will meet No. 5 Johns Hopkins Saturday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. It also set the NCAA single-season record for wins.
Although the Blue Devils maintained their play for a full 60 minutes Sunday, Ohio State (11-6) simply never recovered from Duke's torrid start.
"I guess that's part of their game plan. They were yelling and jawing at us," Crotty said. "Obviously, it didn't work. We went up 9-1 in the first quarter, and it's kind of tough to talk smack after you're down like that."
Ohio State employed a spread-out defensive scheme aimed at pressuring the midfielders. Guarding Duke players as far out as the halfway line, the Buckeyes tried to limit the Blue Devils' scoring opportunities by forcing the midfielders to beat them.
The tactic backfired, as Duke's first and second midfield lines had some of their best performances of the year. The starting unit of Crotty, Brad Ross and Steve Schoeffel combined for a season-high 10 points, including four goals and three assists during the opening period.
"I guess they didn't think we could run by them, but they were trying to push out and pressure us, and we were able to run by them every time," said Crotty, who finished with four assists. "The big thing that helped us was not panicking. Sometimes when a defense pushes out on you, you get uncomfortable and you panic and throw the ball away. But we kept our composure and didn't freak out at all."
The Buckeyes attempted a quick fix to their failing defensive strategy, but it only exposed them to Duke's other attack options. Reacting to the midfielders' success early, Ohio State started to slide from players like Greer and attackman Max Quinzani-the country's leading goal scorers.
But the smart and unselfish passing that has been a Duke hallmark all season long led to easy goals. Quinzani netted five goals and added one assist, while Greer, the NCAA's all-time leading goal scorer, eclipsed his previous career-high of 10 points-a mark he set in last year's quarterfinals-with six goals and five assists.
"Things just kind of came my way today. The ball flowed my way," Greer said. "Both our midfield lines were really dominant.... The midfield drew so much attention that [Ohio State] had to slide and that opened it up for the rest of us."
Head coach John Danowski said the star attackman played as he usually does, generating tallies in a variety of ways with one common thread: each one was a product of the Blue Devils' team concept.
"He never dodges for goals, he never scores right-handed, he never feeds right-handed. He's very limited in what he does, and he gets 11 points," Danowski said. "Zack gets very quiet points. When all is said and done, you're shocked at the number of points he gets just because he plays the game. He just does his job."
Throughout the season, Danowski said he has stressed that Duke is not simply the Matt Danowski and Zack Greer show, referring to the two Tewaraaton Trophy finalists. Despite Greer's remarkable numbers Sunday, last year's Tewaarton Trophy winner Danowski finished with just one goal and two assists. Nine other Blue Devils registered a point against the Buckeyes-proof that his team truly does have a balanced attack.
It's also something that will surely give the remaining NCAA tournament teams headaches.
"It makes us incredibly dangerous," Crotty said. "Alright, fine, try to shut down one guy, but we've got five other guys who are capable of stepping up. Pick your poison. We're all starting to click and this is the time of year you want to do that. You want to be saving your best lacrosse for this upcoming weekend."
In a rematch of last year's title game, the Blue Devils must defeat defending national champion Johns Hopkins in the semifinal before potentially meeting the winner of No. 2 Virginia and No. 3 Syracuse. Earlier this season, Duke handed the Blue Jays one of the worst losses in the program's history with a 17-6 victory on April 5.
The Blue Devils said they are expecting a much different and much better Johns Hopkins squad. After all, the Blue Jays haven't lost since their drubbing in Durham. For now, though, Duke is just focused on improving itself and relishing its chance at redemption.
"It hasn't really set in yet," Crotty said. "Afterwards in the locker room, people were saying, 'We're going back to the Final Four.' It's a great feeling to get a second chance at what we couldn't accomplish last year."
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