SPECIALTY PROTECTION
WOMEN'S PROTECTIVE
Due to the seemingly never-ending bad weather, the Duke Blue Devils traveled to College Park a day late only to be handed their first loss of the season. The effort of a record breaking performance by senior net minder Danny McCormick and his supporting cast of long poles stifled the Duke offense for the majority of the game. Although Duke took an early lead going up 3-1, the Maryland defense became comfortable with their matchups and surrendered only 1 goal for a span of nearly 47 minutes. McCormick attributed the "rusty" look to "the lack of competition" that they had faced so far in this season (due to both scheduling and weather). It was a fast paced and hard hitting game that seemed to play very much into Duke's hands, but as the first quarter came to a close, the game would belong to the Terrps.
Senior midfielder Willy Passavia, who along with younger brother Chris is part of one of two brother tandems for Maryland's team, started the scoring off less than a minute into the contest when he took a feed from freshman attackman Joe Walters, and after making a quick juke finished with a hard over the top score. Duke would respond that quarter with a string of 3 goals, started off by the Garden City native, freshman Dan Flannery, who took a feed from fellow attackman, sophomore Matt Monfett, and found the back of the net. Only 13 seconds later came a goal from Kevin Brennan off a dish from All-American Kevin Cassese that gave the Blue Devils the lead. Still Duke wasn't finished. Matt Rewkowski sent Ben Fenton the ball and after a hard cut at the top and a quick shot, Duke was up 3-1. Maryland, in the final minutes of the first quarter, gladly accepted a gift by the man-down Duke defense when junior Paul Jepsen, in an attempt to pick up a loose ball on the crease, lost control and accidentally caused a score for Maryland. This brought the game to within 1, making the score 3-2 after the first 15 minutes.
The second quarter, which started off with Duke?s Ben Fenton connecting with Devan Wray for Wray's only goal of the game, soon would turn ugly for the Blue Devils. Next came a streak of 5 unanswered goals before the half closed out. Two of those five came on man-up opportunities, the first from Dan LaMonica who slipped between his d-man and the crease to net Maryland?s first goal of the quarter. That man-up play was following by Brian Hunt's second score of the day. In the ensuing man-up situation, Mike Mollot finished a Joe Walters assist to give a lead to the Terrps that they would not relinquish. With 4:40 remaining in the half, Brian Hunt finished his hat-trick off an assist from Mike Mollot, who finished with a two point effort. 17 seconds later, Ryan Moran netted one of his two, and was followed in the third quarter by Dan LaMonica?s second score.
With an 8-4 lead at this point, the Maryland Terrapins continued to build pressure in the second half with goals from Ian Healy in the third quarter and Justin Smith in the fourth. It didn?t let up. Soon after, LaMonica found Bill McGlone for a score and LaMonica netted one on his own.
Although the outcome of this game was almost certain, the Blue Devils fought back with Cassese taking a feed from Monfett in a man up situation to cut at a nearly insurmountable lead to 8 with only 5:04 left. Following that goal Kevin Brennan netted an unassisted goal with 5:04 left in regulation and followed it up with another unassisted goal with 0:23 left in the game. The last efforts of Duke proved to be too little too late.
It was a bad day for the Blue Devils of Duke to meet a hot Maryland defense and a young but clicking Terrapin offense. The past two outings against Duke are also of note for Maryland, as they both ended in losses, one in a single overtime, while the other took two overtime periods - a seemingly good explanation as to why such a highly motivated squad gave such a great effort in a big win.
For those of you who like numbers, here you go:
Shots: Duke 43, Maryland 35; Ground balls: Duke 23, Maryland 35; Face-offs: Duke 11-23, Maryland 12-23; Clears: Duke 11-13, Maryland 20-25; Extra Man Opportunities: Duke 1-6, Maryland 4-6; and fianlly attendance: 1831.
