Max Quinzani nearly had enough goals to outscore Holy Cross on his own.
With more than a little assistance from his teammates, he had no problem helping the Blue Devils stop their first losing streak since 2004.
Quinzani tallied six goals against the Crusaders (0-3) as No. 13 Duke (3-2) cruised to a 16-7 victory on its practice field Tuesday. The game was moved from Koskinen Stadium because of the snowstorm that hit Durham Monday.
"It's not very glamorous," head coach John Danowski said. "Saturday's game [against Maryland] was really glamorous-playing in a big stadium, 17,000 people, television. That's a big deal. Now you're playing on a Tuesday afternoon on your practice field in front of about 150 parents, and so with all that being said, I thought we did a really good job."
The Blue Devils jumped out to a 7-2 halftime lead by outshooting Holy Cross 36-9 and controlling time of possession. But the Crusaders hung around in the third quarter, matching Duke's two goals in that period to stay within five of the Blue Devils.
"It's one of those things where you're taking so many shots and we had long possessions and you never felt like you were not in control, but I've seen crazier things happen in athletics," Danowski said. "So there was that little bit of that, 'Wow, we've got to put them away.'"
And that's just what Duke did, going on a decisive run to prevent any chance of a Crusader comeback. Zach Howell and Mike Catalino scored 15 seconds apart less than two minutes into the fourth quarter, and Quinzani scored his final goal just more than 45 seconds later to send Duke to a 12-4 lead.
That paved the way for a seven-goal quarter, as the Blue Devils finished strong for the second consecutive contest-but this time, the result was a win.
"We stopped worrying about the little plays and we just started flowing," Quinzani said. "Everyone was doing the right stuff. It was easy. We were like interchangeable parts out there."
The Blue Devils dominated almost every statistical category. They gathered 44 ground balls to Holy Cross' 27 and outshot the Crusaders 62-28.
"We only got 16 or 17 goals, but we're happy with the amount of shots that we got," said senior attackman Ned Crotty, who had two goals and four assists. "We took smart shots. We've just got to bury them."
But perhaps more significant than the shot disparity was the fact that Duke won 23-of-27 faceoffs. Sam Payton won 17 of his 20 faceoff attempts, and the combined effort of Payton, C.J. Costabile and Catalino gave Duke a sizable advantage in ball control.
That allowed the Blue Devils to have more opportunities to work on their new motion offense and to fire all those attempts at Holy Cross goalie Jimmy Harrison.
"It's starting to come slowly," Danowski said. "We didn't get a lot of shots, we didn't have the ball a lot against Harvard and against Colgate and even Bucknell, but now we're starting to do those things."
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