The Blue Devils fought tenaciously to defend their home court, but it was not enough to slow down the undefeated Wolverines.
No. 20 Michigan swept past Duke in three sets (25-19, 25-20, 25-21) Friday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium, dealing the Blue Devils a second loss during their six-game homestand. Senior outside hitter Emily Sklar was close to another double-double—putting down eight kills and 13 digs to keep the Blue Devils in the game—but the Wolverines relied on their deep lineup and fast defensive rotation to claim another road win.
"[I am] just disappointed with the way we executed tonight," Duke head coach Jolene Nagel said. "I think we did some things...really well and at a high level, but then we made some mistakes [that] we just can't afford to make, that are easy mistakes to fix...in order to be able to be win a match against a team like Michigan."
Duke (5-4) came out strong in the first set with aggressive offensive swings and forced the Wolverines into seven attack errors. But Michigan (10-0) bounced back quickly after a timeout, setting up solid coverage at the net to stymie the Blue Devil attack and send Duke into an offensive drought. Senior libero Tiffany Morales chased the ball down behind middle blockers Krystalyn Goode and Abby Cole, racking up 16 digs and slowly putting Michigan ahead with a 15-10 lead.
Duke made several pushes trying to even the score later in the set, with redshirt senior setter Maggie Deichmeister delivering several assists to help narrow the gap to just one, before the Wolverines closed the set with a 6-1 run.
After hitting just .043 in the first set thanks to 10 attack errors, the Blue Devils tried to regroup in the next two sets, but just could not keep pace with the Wolverines. Michigan utilized a deep roster, adding fresh energy onto the court frequently to stay one step ahead of Duke on defense and winning several long rallies.
At one point in the second set, Duke evened the score at 16-16, before giving up the momentum with a service error that led to another 6-0 spurt by Michigan. The Blue Devils committed six service errors in the match—including one that sealed their fate at the end of the third set—compared to none by the Wolverines.
"It's kind of like a silly error, you know, [and] we are just going to eliminate those," Nagel said. "We can build on the good things that we do. There were some really nice digs. So I think if we could’ve gotten rid of the net violations, a blocking error here, miscommunication there—which is so easy to take care of that normally we don’t see—and win the easy balls, it would have been a whole different story."
As in the first two sets, the final stanza began with the teams trading points, but once again, Michigan would pull away. Duke made one last stand to close the deficit to one point, but were unable to stop the Wolverines from picking up their 10th win of the season..
Duke will have to quickly regroup after the loss to host Michigan State Saturday at 6:30 p.m., trying to bounce back and even its home record.
"We are going to have to pick ourselves up because the team is extremely disappointed after they didn’t take advantage of those easy places," Nagel said. "So now not only do we have to physically get ready to go, we are going to [have to] get mentally ready to go because we know we can be that much better than we were tonight."
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