It’s tough to score when you don’t have the ball. The Blue Devils learned that lesson the hard way Sunday.
Duke struggled to gain possession and was forced to play too much defense, resulting in an 11-9 loss to Maryland in Sunday afternoon’s ACC Championship at Koskinen Stadium. The loss is Duke’s first to an ACC team this year.
In the first period, the offense was efficient with the ball, making it seem as if the Blue Devils would cruise to victory. Senior attacker Zach Howell put two early goals away, the second of which was assisted by Jordan Wolf—they lead Duke in those respective categories.
Junior Robert Rotanz, who has come on strong toward the end of the season, added two early goals, and David Lawson put one in to leave the Blue Devils with a commanding 5-2 lead, resembling the offensive onslaught they unleashed on Virginia on Friday.
“[In the first period] we had some possessions on offense, we were pretty effective in six-on-six offense and we got a transition opportunity to go and attack their defense,” Howell said. “We were hitting some shots and that gives you rhythm when you get the ball on offense. We lost that rhythm in the second half because we didn’t see the ball much.”
Even in that first quarter, Duke did not have as much possession as it would like, largely stemming from its inability to collect faceoffs. The team was 1-for-8 on in the first period and 6-for-24 on for the entire game.
“Simply, I think… it was a matter of the face-off game,” head coach John Danowski said. “You know when you win 25% of the face-offs, I thought we played defense pretty well over long stretches, but too much defense.”
That early success proved to be unsustainable due to a lack of possession. The Blue Devils seemingly never had the ball in the second period and were outscored 4-1 in that time. Grant Catalino, voted the tournament’s most valuable player, led the charge with two goals in the first half for Maryland.
Their dominance in possession continued into the third period when Maryland secured its first lead of the game at 7-6. Although Duke showed signs of life and retook the lead at 8-7, the Terrapins responded with two goals from which they never looked back.
Although Catalino notched a hat trick, the Maryland attack was diverse. Eight different players found the net for the Terrapins, including senior defenseman Brett Schmidt who scored on a fast-break for his first goal of the year on a play assisted by goalie Niko Amato.
“Even though the defense was playing a lot of defense, the offense needs to score more goals than them to win, and we obviously didn’t do that as a team today,” Howell said.
The loss snaps a 17-game home winning streak for Duke that dates back to March of last year.
Even with the loss, it was easy for the Blue Devils to draw positives from their performance. The team was two-for-two on extra-man opportunities, an area in which they have been inconsistent this season. And even though Duke struggled to initially gain possessions due to poor faceoff play, the team took care of the ball when it had it with only seven turnovers.
“I was really proud of our guys,” Danowski said. “I’m very proud of our guys for fighting and playing as hard as they played for as long as they played. I think this game will serve us really well down the line. I think we’re going to grow and be a better team as a result of today.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.