Baltimore, MD - The Duke Blue Devils used a three goal run to start the 2nd quarter to overcome Hopkins, 11-9. On a cold afternoon with light flurries in the air, Zack Greer notched a sock trick (six goals) on six shots and added an assist on top for Duke. Linemate Matt Danowski assisted on four of Greer's goals. Five other Blue Devils notched goals. The Blue Jays also had five players add solo goals, while freshman Steven Boyle and junior Stephen Peyser (2g, 2a) added two goals apiece. Paul Rabil also added two assists with his solo goal.
Hopkins came out early and took the lead on an unassisted Stephen Peyser goal less than a minute into the game. From there the teams would battle back-and-forth. Two Zack Greer goals, his third (while man-down) and fourth of the game, came with less than three minutes left in the half. That gave Duke some momentum and a 6-4 lead with :36 left in the half. Hopkins fought for possession and got it with time winding down in the first. As they moved it down to start their offense, an unfortunate interruption in the game occurred, as a fan let go a long blow horn. This confused and delayed the game with just :18 left in the half. Off of the unexpected delay, Hopkins worked it around, but didn’t look like they were going to be able to get a quality shot off. That was until Stephen Peyser hit Kevin Huntley coming across the middle. With no angle Huntley banged a behind-the-back shot to the far pipe and beat Duke’s goalie Dan Loftus with :01 left on the clock.
“Obviously today’s very disappointing and a little frustrating, but I thought there were a couple of things that changed this game. I thought the fact that Zack Greer had six goals; we did not do a good enough job accounting for him. That’s our game plan and that’s on me. I just felt like going into the game that we press Danowski and then to think about shutting off Greer and not sliding off him would have been a little too much and too difficult to do against a Duke offense. So we chose to press Danowski and I thought you saw Michael Evans did a terrific job covering Matt Danowski with the ball. I think Michael Evans grew up today and I have an awful lot of confidence in him. Matt can get you in different ways, and he got us a little bit feeding the ball. I’d rather him do that than scoring goals,” said Hopkins head coach Dave Pietramala.
“The second thing that got us is five minutes. Five minutes turned this game around, that’s the first five minutes of the third quarter. We talked about it in the huddle about winning the first five minutes and I believe they went on a three goal run and that changes the whole game. At two points we kind of let the game get away from us. I think there was a three or four minute period at the end of the first half where we let it get away from us. I thought there was a five minute period at the beginning of third quarter that we let it get away from us. Then the other thing is special teams. They go 1 for 3, we go 0 for 3 [man-up]. We take one off the board and put one more on the board and again you have a different game. I’m very proud of how hard our guys played. If we had played this hard and this competitively in all our other games then we wouldn’t find ourselves in this situation. But we do. We face a new challenge, and we’re going to stay together. We’re going to go back to work and correct the mistakes and get ready for the University of Maryland. But congratulations to Duke, they’re an outstanding lacrosse team. And with the exception of five minutes, I think you saw a pretty good Johns Hopkins lacrosse team as well,” added Pietramala.
In the first three minutes, defenseman Casey Carroll and attackmen Gibbs Fogarty and Greer all added goals to stretch what had been a 6-5 halftime lead into a comfortable 9-5 lead. Hopkins continued to battle, but couldn’t get it any closer than 10-8 with 8:31 to play. Duke managed to do just enough to stay ahead of Hopkins as they looked to slow the pace of the game down and hold on to the ball. Attackman Max Quinzani only managed one goal on the day, but he showed his versatility throughout. He rode hard all game, worked to keep the pressure on the Hopkins D, and at the end did a nice acting job to draw a flag on Stephen Peyser as Hopkins was desperately trying to get the ball back with 1:17 left in the game.
“I thought it was a really hard fought game. I was proud to be a part of this. Duke-Hopkins on a Saturday afternoon. I thought it was two really good lacrosse teams basically slugging it out for two hours. Certainly we’re delighted to win. Any time you can win at Homewood, it’s special for a lacrosse guy. Anyone that’s a historian or has a sense of history knows how difficult it is to win here because of the greatness and the tradition of Johns Hopkins,” said Duke head coach John Danowski.
“I thought we came up with some big groundballs. We try to push the ball as much as we can because we have athletes. I thought Tony McDevitt did it one time. We came up with a big goal after a man-down situation when Mike Ward pushed the ball up to Parker McKee and I think Parker threw it to Zack. I thought overall that we took advantage of situations. One of our goals coming into the season is we want to be good at every aspect of the game. We worked a lot on man-down clearing and getting the ball upfield, we don’t really work on man-down clearing to score goals, but today that opportunity presented itself.”
Duke now heads back home for a showdown against ACC rival and third-ranked Virginia next Saturday. Hopkins also has a rival game coming up against the Maryland Terps. They, however, find themselves in a precarious position, as they are 4-4 with games left against Maryland, Navy, Towson and Loyola. A .500 season (a requirement to make the NCAA tournament) is not a given with a schedule like theirs.
From Press Release
BALTIMORE, Md. - Zack Greer scored six goals and Matt Danowski handed out four assists to lead fourth-ranked Duke to an 11-9 victory over ninth-ranked Johns Hopkins in front of 4,802 fans at Homewood Field in Baltimore, Md.
The Blue Devils, winners of four straight, improve to 9-2 on the year while the Blue Jays, who have now lost three in a row for the first time since 1990, fall to 4-4. The win marked Duke's first over Johns Hopkins since the 1997 NCAA Tournament when the Blue Devils prevailed in a 12-11 overtime decision in College Park, Md.
Stephen Peyser put Johns Hopkins on top less than one minute into the contest with an unassisted goal. Duke had an opportunity to tie the game at the 11 minute mark, but Fred Krom's shot from the right side bounced off the left post. With 8:42 remaining in the opening quarter, Greer received a pass from Danowski and beat Blue Jay goalkeeper Jesse Schwartzman from 10 yards out on the left side to make the score 1-1.
After Duke won the ensuing face-off with a groundball by Bo Carrington, and the Danowski-to-Greer combination hooked up again for a goal - Greer's 30th tally of the year - to give the Blue Devils a 2-1 advantage at the 7:32 mark. Peyser's second goal of the afternoon came on a feed from Paul Rabil with 6:47 on the clock and knotted the game at 2-2.
The Blue Devils regained possession following a Blue Jay turnover, and an unassisted goal by Brad Ross with 54 seconds left and Duke would lead 3-2 after one period. Johns Hopkins struck quickly in the second quarter as Matt Bocklet tallied a goal just 17 seconds into the period to tie the contest at three goals each.
Duke took advantage of an extra man situation when Danowski sent a low shot into the bottom right-hand corner of the net to push the Blue Devils ahead, 4-3, with 7:13 left in the second quarter. The Blue Jays answered at the 5:43 mark when Steven Boyle bounced in an unassisted goal past Duke goalie Dan Loftus.
After Loftus saved an extra man chance for the Blue Jays, a scramble for the ball in front of the Duke net resulted into a fast break opportunity for the Blue Devils. Tony McDevitt scooped up the ground ball and pushed ahead to Michael Ward, who found a streaking Parker McKee down the middle of the field. McKee darted into the offensive end and drew the defense before passing to Greer, who deposited his third goal of the game to push Duke back ahead with 2:57 left in the quarter. With just 36 seconds left before halftime, Greer secured a ground ball on the crease and tossed another into the net for a 6-4 Blue Devil lead. Johns Hopkins scored the final goal of the half, with Kevin Huntley finding the back of the net with just one second on the clock.
Casey Carroll's first goal of the season came on an assist from Greer at the 14:23 mark of the third period and less than one minute later Gibbs Fogarty recovered a loose ball in front of the net and scored for an 8-5 advantage. After the Blue Jays won the next face-off but turned the ball over, Danowski set up Greer again for a Duke goal at the 12:33 mark, making the score 9-5. Johns Hopkins pulled within 9-6 at the 10:53 mark when Boyle tallied an unassisted goal.
Ward gained possession with a defensive takeaway near midfield and the possession led to Greer's sixth goal of the day -- on another assist from Danowski - to give the Blue Devils a 10-6 lead at the 5:47 mark. The Blue Jays wasted little time in trimming the margin back to three when Jamison Koesterer won the ensuing face-off and scored an unassisted goal just six seconds later.
With 8:31 remaining in the fourth period, Johns Hopkins' Michael Kimmel scored from Paul Rabil to make the score 10-8 in favor of the Blue Devils. Duke's Dan Oppedisano won the following face-off to set up Max Quinzani's dodge from behind the goal and high bounce shot that slipped past Schwartzman. The tally came at the 6:22 mark and pushed the lead back to three. At the 2:58 mark, Rabil's goal from Peyser brought Johns Hopkins back within two goals at 11-9. Duke secured the ensuing face-off, and held possession until one minute left on the clock. The Blue Jays then misfired four times as Duke held on for the two-goal victory.
Loftus closed the afternoon with 13 saves while Schwartzman logged 12 in the Hopkins net. Carroll was credited with a game-high seven ground balls.
The win snaps Duke's four-game losing streak against Johns Hopkins while giving the Blue Devils four road wins this season over Maryland, North Carolina, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins.
Today's six-goal effort marked Greer's 19th career hat trick and his 12th game with four or more goals. In 39 career games, the Whitby, Ontario, Canada native now has 108 tallies to rank in a tie for eighth place on Duke’s all-time chart.
Danowski finished with four assists on the day, giving him 13 over the past three games. The Farmingdale, N.Y., product now has 99 helpers in his career, leaving him one shy of becoming just the fifth player in ACC history and the 34th player in NCAA history to register 100 or more goals and 100 or more assists in a career. With five total points against the Blue Jays, Danowski now has 209 in his career and ranks in a tie for fourth place on Duke's career scoring chart and tied for 13th on the ACC's all-time list. His 99 career assists stand as the 17th-highest total in ACC history.
Duke returns home to face defending national champion Virginia on Saturday, April 14 at 1 p.m.
