“It’s a tough pill to swallow.”
That was Duke men’s soccer coach John Kerr, emotions still raw only minutes after his team fell to Creighton 3-2 in the NCAA quarterfinals Saturday afternoon.
Most team sports have games where one team seems to dominate but comes out on the short end of the score. Think of a baseball game where one team leaves 14 men on base and loses or an American football game where the losing team misses four field goals.
But soccer seems especially to lend itself to this scenario. Some soccer goals are the result of a careful, methodical buildup, some the result of individual brilliance. But many just seem like a physics experiment at CERN, with the ball bouncing randomly in the box, waiting for a keeper to swoop it up or a defender to clear it. Or for it to find a foot or a head or a shoulder and find its way in to the goal.
If you look at the final stats you don’t see how Creighton was even competitive. Duke had 19 shots, Creighton 8. Duke had 10 shots on goal, Creighton had 3. Creighton committed 14 fouls to Duke’s eight and the game’s three yellow cards were all against Creighton. Duke had a jaw-dropping 22 to 3 advantage on corner kicks.
And still lost, a two-minute span late in the first half an absolute disaster for the seventh-seeded Blue Devils.
The teams traded early goals and it appeared they would go into intermission even at a goal each. With three minutes left in the half Duke keeper Elliot Hamill appeared to save a bouncing ball off the foot of Jackson Castro. But referee Elvis Osmanovic called it a goal and confirmed the call after a Video Assisted Review.
I freely confess I haven’t seen a really good replay of the goal but the ones I have seen suggest that “no goal” might have been the correct call.
Kerr certainly agreed with my suggestion that it was “iffy.”
“From our phones, when we saw the replay, it didn’t look like it was over the line. I’m not sure how they can make that kind of a call when, as you mention, it was ‘iffy.’ From what I saw, it wasn’t clear.”
A one-goal deficit against a good team--and Creighton certainly is very good--is sub-optimal. But not impossible. But Duke may have lost the game when they conceded a third goal with 41 seconds left in the half on a 25-yard blast off the foot of Charles Auguste.
Soccer players and coaches talk a lot about space and time. Kerr said that “I don’t think any goal tender in the world could have gotten that one.” True. But Auguste had way too much space and time to line it up.
Down two goals Duke “threw the kitchen sink” at Creighton in the second half. And give the Blue Jays credit. Protecting a lead is a skill. They packed it in on defense but attacked often enough to keep Duke off balance. Creighton conceded an own goal with about 15 minutes remaining but their goalie Paul Kruse made several spectacular saves to preserve the one-goal lead.
“I thought we were excellent in the second half,” Kerr said. “We really took it to them from every angle. The ball just didn’t bounce our way. The guys were putting their bodies on the line, making runs to the box. We just needed a little bit of luck to get that third goal because I’m confident that if we had that third goal, we would have been victors.”
You never know for sure these days but Duke should return the bulk of its team for next season, including ACC Offensive Player of the Year Shakur Mohammed, ACC Midfielder of the Year Peter Stroud and ACC Freshman of the Year Kamran Acito. But Hamill will have to be replaced and that’s a big ask. You can’t have an elite team without an elite goalkeeper. No inside info but I would look for someone from the transfer portal.
While Duke’s futbol team ended its season, Duke’s football team found out the details of when, where and how it will continue its season. After weeks of speculation sending Duke to El Paso, Charlotte or Tampa, we found out that Duke will play Central Florida December 28 in the Annapolis-based Military Bowl.
It’s hard to come up with a starker contrast. Duke is a small, academically-elite private school from a Power-Five conference. UCF is a massive, state-supported Group of Five school that no one to the best of my knowledge has ever called academically elite. But it has had an outstanding football program since around 2005 and will join the Big 12 next year. They’ve been nationally ranked this season, beat Georgia Tech and destroyed Temple 70-13.
But they were beaten 45-28 by Tulane in the AAC title game. They also lost decisively to East Carolina.
Bowl director Steve Beck said that “it’s amazing to me that schools like Duke are able to perform as well as they can. It’s a different kind of recruit you’re getting there than you’re getting at UCF. But both have a place in college football. But it is really exciting to see how well Duke has done.”
Bowl games are always a delicate balance between rewarding your team for a good season, using the extra practices to get a jump start on spring ball and the following season and actually winning the game.
Elko said winning the game would be priority number one.
“This is kind of its own entity. We look at this as championship season. You get the 12-game regular season that ends at the Wake Forest game. Then you get this little time off to focus on some things, heal the bodies, develop certain parts of your roster. We’re going to this bowl game to try to become the 2022 Military Bowl champions and to walk away with this trophy and put this as part of our program. We’re certainly not going to look at it as the first game of 2023. We’re going to play this thing with our guys and play to win and play to the best of our ability.”
He added that injured offensive lineman Jacob Monk, wide receiver Eli Pancol and tight end Nicky Dalmolin should be good to go against the Knights.
Kickoff 2 P.M.
Tough loss for the soccer team for sure. I like Coach Elmo’s take on the Military Bowl however. And great news in getting three very valuable players back for that game — both for the team and for those guys to have a chance to finish the year on a high note!!! Thanks for the great reporting Jim!!