When the NCAA tournament field was announced Monday afternoon, the Blue Devils heard their names called, as they have for the past 11 seasons. But Duke will not have the luxury of opening postseason play in Durham for the first time in three years.
The Blue Devils will travel to Colorado Springs, Colo., for their first-round matchup Saturday against Colorado College. The Tigers earned Conference USA’s automatic tournament bid by winning the conference tournament.
“Making the tournament, obviously we’re really excited,” Duke head coach Robbie Church said. “When we stepped in this room Aug. 5, our goal was to play for a national championship and now it’s here.”
With just a few weeks remaining in the season, it didn’t seem like that goal would even have an opportunity to be realized. The Blue Devils (8-8-4, 5-5-3 in the ACC) had to fight back into contention in the ACC, and clinched a winning regular-season record with just one game remaining.
“We’ve had kind of a rocky season, but at this point it doesn’t matter,” senior forward Laura Weinberg said. “Everyone’s going into this tournament 0-0. It’s a clean slate, fresh start for us, and we’ve historically done really well.”
Duke dealt with one of the nation’s most challenging schedules this year. All four top seeds in the NCAA tournament hail from the ACC, and the conference earned seven bids to the field overall.
Colorado College (15-4-2, 8-1-1 in Conference USA) is making its 11th appearance in the NCAA tournament. The Tigers are not entirely unknown to Church, but he’ll be doing a lot more digging between now and Saturday.
"They’ve had a fantastic year. I’ve been following them a little bit, I voted for them a few times in the last two or three weeks in the Top 25 in the NCAA poll because of so many wins they’ve had,” Church said. “Now we’ll go and look at them a lot closer.”
Conference USA isn’t as strong as the ACC, but still boasts stiff competition in Old Dominion, East Carolina and Charlotte. Colorado College will enter the match riding a wave of momentum, having posted a 4-1-1 record in its last six games.
By contrast, the Blue Devils were ousted 2-0 in the first round of the ACC tournament by Florida State, and have spent the past week training hard and getting healthy.
Weinberg said opening the tournament on the road could be a blessing in disguise for the Blue Devils.
“We are traveling, but it’s a good opportunity for us to play someone who we haven’t played before and focus, get in the zone and not get distracted by some of the things we could be distracted by if we were playing at home,” she said.
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