Duke will need to top a familiar foe to reach the NCAA Tournament’s championship weekend for the seventh consecutive season.
Fresh off a double-overtime victory against defending national champion Loyola, the seventh-seeded Blue Devils (13-5) will square off with No. 2 seed Notre Dame (11-4) Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The opening faceoff for this NCAA quarterfinal matchup is slated for 2:30 p.m.
“At this time of year, we focus specifically on ourselves,” senior midfielder Dave Lawson said. “If we get it right, and we play our game, there isn’t much that anybody else can do to stop us.”
Duke has faced the Fighting Irish in the regular season each of the last four years, falling to Notre Dame each time, including a 13-5 loss Feb. 16 in the teams’ last meeting.
“We like to think that we’ve gotten better as the season has gone on, and I’m sure that Notre Dame feels that they have gotten a lot better as the season has gone on to get them to this point,” Duke head coach John Danowski said.
But the Blue Devils have also defeated the Fighting Irish twice during that span in postseason play, including the 2010 national championship game and the NCAA quarterfinals in 2011.
Sunday’s contest features two teams whose offensive trajectories have been going in opposite directions in recent weeks. The Blue Devils have not scored fewer than 11 goals in a contest since March 8—a span of 11 games.
Notre Dame has had a tough time scoring as of late, averaging just 4.7 goals per game in its last three outings. The Fighting Irish have not scored more than seven goals in a game in nearly a month, since it posted 13 tallies against Villanova April 20.
On the offensive end, Notre Dame is led by freshman attack Matt Kavanagh, who has posted 29 goals and 13 assists in his first collegiate season.
“Kavanagh and [Jim] Marlatt are extremely dangerous and terrific shooters,” Danowski said. “We had no game film on them, and now we have film on them and they have film on us.”
Sophomore goaltender Kyle Turri also said that the pace of play will be crucial in Sunday’s contest, which pits Duke’s up-tempo style against a Notre Dame squad that grinds out offensive possessions.
“We just have to be ready to bear down against a team like Notre Dame,” Turri said. “They’re going to slow it down and we’re going to have to be ready to play against them for long possessions.”
The Fighting Irish are one of the top defensive teams in the country, ranking eighth in the nation in scoring defense at just 8.07 goals per game. John Kemp has been one of the nation’s top netminders for Notre Dame this season. The senior posted a 7.94 goals against average and has saved 54.1 percent of the shots he has faced in 15 contests.
After winning 19-of-26 draws from the faceoff X in Duke’s first-round victory against Loyola, junior midfielder Brendan Fowler hopes to control the faceoff battle once again for the Blue Devils. Notre Dame’s faceoff combination of Nick Ossello, Liam O’Connor and Trevor Brosco has combined to win just 51.9 percent of its draws this season, compared to Fowler’s 65.1-percent clip.
Duke’s comeback victory in the first round was also keyed by the play of three freshman Blue Devils—attacks Case Matheis and Deemer Class and midfielder Myles Jones. All three scored goals down the stretch for Duke, with Matheis tallying both the game-tying and game-winning goals.
Lawson said the play of Duke’s rookies will be crucial to keeping the team’s streak of NCAA Tournament success alive.
“Every year it seems like there are a couple of freshman that the team needs to play, and there’s no doubt that Case, Deemer and Myles are those three guys that we need to be successful for the team to be successful,” Lawson said.
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