Classes haven't started yet, but the regular season officially gets underway for Duke tonight.
After two strong showings in exhibition games against South Carolina and UNC-Wilmington and sporting a squad laden with young talent, No. 10 Duke will open its season Friday at 5 p.m. in the UNC Nike Classic against Ohio State at Fetzer Field in Chapel Hill. The match against Ohio State will be the first of two games that the Blue Devils will play in the tournament, the second being a rematch of the 2011 national championship against No. 7 Stanford Sunday at noon.
Unlike last year’s opening lineup, which boasted five seniors and only three freshmen, this year’s team looks to be much younger with a large number of freshmen expected to make an impact in Friday's game.
With so many young players anticipating their first career start and even more underclassmen ready to contribute off the bench, it will be up to the group of rising seniors to guide this team to a place only the seniors are familiar with: the national championship.
“Every team needs to have great senior leadership and I think we’ve had really wonderful leadership,” head coach Robbie Church said. “They know as seniors in our program they have a lot of responsibility, and I’m really happy of how they’ve stepped up both on and off the field.”
Freshmen Imani Dorsey, Ashton Miller, Casey Martinez, Schuyler DeBree, and Morgan Reid saw lots of time in Duke's two exhibitions, and could factor into Friday's starting lineup. Only one senior—forward Kelly Cobb—is a definite to be in the starting lineup come Friday. Despite that, it will be on the shoulders of every upperclassman, starter or not, to help lead this inexperienced squad.
“Even some players who won’t start, they have to make sure that everybody’s prepared,” Church said. “Everybody has to work and get everybody prepared for [Friday’s] game…. We need to have everybody on board, everybody going in the right direction, everybody helping each other.”
Although the Buckeyes are unranked, they are not to be taken lightly, as Ohio State recently went on the road to defeat No. 14 Wake Forest in an exhibition game. The Buckeyes return eight starters from last year's team that was knocked out in the first round of the 2013 NCAA tournament—including leading goal-scorer Nichelle Prince—giving them a lot of experience to work with, which can prove valuable especially early in the season.
It will also be important for the Blue Devils not to look past the unranked Buckeyes toward their matchup Sunday against the seventh-ranked Cardinal. For the seniors, the game against Stanford is a rematch three years in the making, an opportunity to avenge the defeat that denied the Blue Devils their first national championship.
“They’re still young kids a little bit,” Church said. “I hope [they don’t overlook Ohio State]. We’re in a lot of trouble if they do…. But I think that’s one of our [the coaching staff’s] jobs is to make sure they don’t overlook that.”
For the seniors, this season is their last opportunity to return to the national title game after reaching it three years ago as freshmen before falling in the quarterfinals the past two seasons. The prospect of still having that one final shot at grabbing a national championship in December will be a motivating factor throughout the season.
“It’s incredibly exciting,” Cobb said. “The thing we’re bringing back as a senior class is to literally embrace every single second of the opportunity that we’ve been given…. I think as a collective unit—as seniors—our goal is to just really emphasize that every day counts, every game counts.”
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