It just wasn’t meant to be.
Duke was in prime position to pull off an exciting upset on Thursday night at Koskinen Stadium against undefeated No. 1 Virginia, but was unable to seal the victory ending the match with a 3-2 defeat.
Senior forward Gloria Douglas scored the game-winner for the Cavaliers, netting her first goal of the season from just outside the six-yard box with only 10 minutes left to play. Her goal capped a huge comeback for Virginia, who trailed the Blue Devils 2-0 at halftime.
This marked the second straight game that No. 22 Duke (4-5-2, 1-3-1 in the ACC) led 2-0 after halftime but was unable to come away with a win, having battled Syracuse to a 2-2 draw earlier in the week.
“This is the second game in a row where we’ve slipped up," head coach Robbie Church said. "It’s part of being a young team. You’ve got to finish games and were not finishing games.”
Virginia came into the game ranked first in scoring in the ACC and second in the NCAA with 3.67 goals per game, led by the ACC’s top two point-scorers, forward Makenzy Doniak and midfielder Morgan Brian.
Having silenced the potent Cavalier offense in the first half, the Blue Devils had a chance to build on their two-goal lead and put the game away. Instead, Virginia (10-0-0, 4-0-0) sensed a threat to their unblemished record and came out in the second half with a sense of urgency.
Just two minutes into the period, Brian took a pass from Danielle Colaprico and slid it past Blue Devil goalkeeper Ali Kershner into the lower left corner for her seventh goal of the season. Doniak added her ACC-leading ninth goal of the year just two minutes after that, settling the score at 2-2 before five minutes had gone by in the second half.
“When you play the No. 1 team in the country, you’d better expect that they’ll be on your half a lot," Kershner said. "They’re going to have opportunities. That’s just part of the game.”
Thanks to first-half goals from junior forward Kelly Cobb and senior captain Kaitlyn Kerr, the Blue Devils quickly jumped out to a promising 2-0 lead. Duke didn’t have an abundance of chances, but they made the most of the ones they got. Cobb tapped in a cross from redshirt senior Kim DeCesare in the ninth minute, followed shortly after by Kerr’s acrobatic bicycle kick that found the back of the net in the 23rd minute.
The Blue Devils’ best chance to score in the second half came soon after Virginia had tied the score. In the 52nd minute, freshman defender Christina Gibbons fired a shot from outside the 18-yard box that rammed off the crossbar and out of play.
“We had a couple of opportunities [to score another goal]," Church said. "We knocked one off the crossbar and we just need to get a little more fortunate, but we’re not far off,”
The loss is a tough one to swallow for Duke, which now has only one win in their past seven games and dips under .500 for the first time this year. The road ahead doesn’t get any easier for the Blue Devils, with Virginia Tech (9-1-1, 4-1-0) coming up at home Sunday.
“We had a couple of tough losses, so we wanted this one big time," Kerr said. "But [the Cavaliers] are a great team, and they showed why they’re No. 1 in the country."
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