Duke Gameday... | Page 16 | Syracusefan.com

Duke Gameday...

Great to see a game where the offense is able to bail out a struggling defense instead of vice versa like it has been at times this year! Anderson with his best game in orange! Spallina and Thomson with a zillion nice plays. Absolutely love the season spallina is putting together. He works hard and gets better every year. If Anderson is shooting and passing like that going forward this offense is a total wagon. Not enough long poles to go around to stop it.

Early on I felt like we were getting outworked on gbs but we found that extra gear on those battes in the second half. Great win!! Great environment in the dome!
 
The halftime stats they put up on the ESPNU screen/broadcast didn't show GBs. I don't want to live in a lacrosse world where GBs don't matter.
 
One veeery questionable call by the Duke staff was that goalie change. Felt like we were not working their first goalie too bad. We just had some pretty wide open looks on most of our early shots. Odd choice to make the change at the half. Not sure if they have been doing the double goalie thing all year?
 
snapshot_Mar28021548.jpg
 
Hopefully Chuck K learned his lesson, his absence was a major part of this game's equation. I thought McCool was fine, he didn't get any help from the D in front of him and he still made some critical saves. Can't say the same for the Duke goalie. It was good to see the offense fire on all cylinders for most of the game. They hadn't played anyone but that was more than double the amount of goals Duke has given up in a game so far. Amazingly, the short sticks were way better than close D today. Spallina had a really nice game, timely checks, good on clears. Dwan playing timid is a result of his chaotic undisciplined style of play this year, he clearly got a talking to by the coaching staff and played overly cautious as a result. That's sadly what happens when you let that lack of discipline go unaddressed.

Regardless, that's a massive win. They still left a lot of meat on the bone with failures to pick up ground balls, but 16 goals against Duke while leading for 80% of the game shows you what this team can do when they're not tripping over themselves.

Duke fans are having meltdowns on social media, makes the win extra sweet.
 
Hopefully eventually this team fully clicks. That the O D n faceoff plus goalie all play their best at same time come end of regular season. If that happens everyone look out. Few games been close for few qtrs. Hasn’t for full game yet but hopefully it’s coming. Offense is starting to get in a groove while the D had few mishaps during last few games.
 
I could easily eat my words but I think this team matches up well with UNC. As long as they don't get too carried away (a lot to ask for unfortunately) this team's physicality can be imposed on an offense like UNC who doesn't really have the kind of bruisers Duke has. Even then, this team's short sticks did really well against Duke's big and imposing players on O. I'm sure UNC will be favored but Duke has a better defense than UNC and this team was able to put 16, albeit at home.
 

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