As six of the eight teams remaining in the tournament call the ACC home, Duke must get through some familiar foes to make it back to the national championship and will travel to Blacksburg, Va., for a match against No. 1 seed Virginia Tech at Thompson Field Friday at 4 p.m.
When the two squads faced off in the regular season, they battled to a 1-1 draw Sept. 30 in Durham, and the Hokies (18-4-3) have only lost to the other No. 1 seeds in the tournament so far this season. But facing a Duke squad that has won six of its last eight, Virginia Tech head coach Charles Adair knows he’ll be seeing a different team.
“I think Duke is much better than their record, no question about it,” he said. “They’re a good, dangerous team with lots of experience, so they’re putting things together now and it’s going to be a very difficult path for us.”
Since losing to Florida State—one of the other NCAA tournament No. 1 seeds—in the ACC tournament, the Blue Devils (9-8-6) have put together a three-game run to keep their hopes of returning to the national championship game for the second time in three years alive. And it’s been the holdovers from the 2011 team that have kept pushing Duke forward.
Junior Kelly Cobb, the 2011 squad’s leading scorer, scored Duke’s lone goal against Colorado College in the first round and then knocked in the deciding shot during the penalty shootout to send Duke on.
Since then the seniors have taken over, with defender Natasha Anasi scoring the game-winning goal and shutting down the nation’s second-highest scorer against second-seeded Florida in the second round and Kim DeCesare—who has played all over the field for the Blue Devils—scoring two goals against Arkansas.
“They know that at any minute this could end. It’s kind of cruel how it ends because you don’t ever know when the end is,” Duke head coach Robbie Church said. “[Our seniors] have refused to lose. They are doing whatever they have to do.”
For DeCesare, a redshirt senior who elected to come back as a fifth year following a 1-0 loss to Penn State in the quarterfinal round of last year’s NCAA tournament, the desire to keep the Blue Devils’ title hopes alive is especially strong.
“Being a senior now… just knowing that this could be the actual end, I think is really squeezing the life out of me and making me play my best,” she said.
In addition to providing an added sense of urgency, Duke’s seniors—five of whom start—also bring a wealth of experience. Anasi and forward Laura Weinberg lead the NCAA in games played among active players, midfielder Kaitlyn Kerr holds Duke’s all-time scoring record for the NCAA tournament, having notched eight goals in the last two years. All of them know both what it takes to make the national championship and how it feels to fall just short.
In contrast, Virginia Tech has never made it this far in the tournament, but Hokie senior goalkeeper Dayle Colpitts has played the same leadership role for her squad.
In the third round, she helped Virginia Tech squeeze by Santa Clara, making eight saves in regulation and stopping three shots in a penalty shootout.
“She’s always been very good, but this year she’s elevated her game,” Church said. “There’s no question about it. She’s the main reason they’re playing. Santa Clara had some great scoring opportunities and she single-handedly really stopped those opportunities.”
The senior also played a big role in keeping Duke from taking the lead during the regular season match, making three saves in a contest where the Blue Devils held a 21-14 shot advantage.
Church know that his team, which has averaged only 1.3 goals per game this season, will face a difficult challenge in trying to break Colpitts.
“She’s going to be hard to beat. There’s no cheap goals on her,” he said. “We have to get in tight on her. We have to get services in. We have to get numbers around her. But if we do that, I think we’ll be in good shape.”
On the other end, the Blue Devils will have to find a way to contain senior Jazmine Reeves, who has 10 goals this year, and Murielle Tiernan, who has 11.
Reeves has yet to score in the tournament, but Tiernan has scored twice.
In the first matchup with Duke, Tiernan fired off six shots but only managed to get one on target, a stat the Blue Devils would like to keep low.
“She hits a great ball from distance, so we have to make sure we close her down from distance so she’s not able to get her head up and take a touch and bury it,” Church said. “Santa Clara didn’t do a good job of closing her down so she struck around the defenders and found the side netting.”
The freshman forward has an opportunity to extend Virginia Tech’s historic run and help the Hokies to their first win in seven matches against the Blue Devils.
Sitting on the edge of one final chance at a national title, Duke’s seniors will have one more ACC matchup sitting in their way.
“We all know it’s been a little up and down all season, but this team refuses to lose and I think it’s led by our seniors,” Church said. “They don’t want their career to end.”
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