I haven’t talked much about soccer this season.
But the Beautiful Game was not beautiful for Duke this season.
At least for the women, who began the season ranked fourth nationally in the United Soccer Coaches Poll but never approached that level.
Duke had to replace goal keeper Ruthie Jones, playmaker Sophie Jones and most of all 2022 Hermann Award winner Michelle Cooper, who turned pro with two seasons of eligibility remaining.
Oregon transfer Leah Freeman was solid in the goal, despite a defense that too often gave opposing attackers too much time and space and allowed more athletic teams to out-athlete them.
But most of all Duke simply could not put the ball in the net. Sophomore Kat Rader led Duke with seven goals. No one else had more than two. Duke scored 15 goals in a 6-7-3 season, less than a goal per game, the worst offense in Robbie Church’s 23-year tenure at Duke.
Duke still had a chance to make the post-season before losing 1-0 at Louisville in the regular-season finale, a fitting end to a goal-challenged season.
“This is obviously very disappointing for our program to go out at this stage and not make the NCAA Tournament. We have to learn from this and grow from this. We have to remember this moment how it is right now--how much it hurts and how much it stings. We will be back. I promise you that.”
The Duke men’s soccer team also began the season ranked fourth in the USC poll despite having to replace Herman Award finalist Peter Stroud and goal keeper extraordinaire Eliot Hamill. Freshman Julian Eyestone, all 6-6 of him, filled the goal while Dayton transfer Forster Ajago and freshman Ulfur Bjornsson keyed the offense.
The former is from Ghana, the latter Iceland.
Yes, men’s college soccer is an international sport.
Ajago was named the ACC Offensive Player of the Year after tallying 14 goals.
It was an up-and-down season but with more ups than downs. Duke was seeded 15th in the NCAA Tournament and drew a first-round bye before opening at home, where they haven’t lost a regular-season game in two seasons.
But their unseeded opponent was a team that definitely should have been seeded. Western Michigan doesn’t score high on the name-recognition board. But they haven’t lost since August, they have a better RPI than Duke, they came to Durham with a 16-1-3 record led by one of the nation’s most potent offenses, led by 6-5 Charlie Sharp, the nation’s leading scorer.
And they had a chip on their shoulder. Head coach Chad Wiseman said after their 2-1 overtime win “I think they motivated the wrong team. For two consecutive years the NCAA has overlooked us. We certainly had the resume of a top-16 team this year and they decided not to give it to us. And this is the wrong group of guys that you want to do that to.”
Wiseman also said that his aim was to make it “more of a midwestern soccer game than an ACC game.”
By midwestern he meant “it’s probably a little bit more physical. When you look at the ACC, it’s a little bit more technical of a game. We wanted to be physical with Duke and I think we accomplished that.”
Ajago had a couple of good looks early and then largely was taken out of the game by a physical WMU defense.
“We wanted to change the type of looks they [Ajago and Bjornsson] were going to get and I thought we did a really good job of limiting services from deep, wide areas for those two guys to get on the end of it.”
Kerr’s reaction to the level of physicality?
“I knew it was going to be that way. We were hoping that it would be called differently but certainly he’s right, he got what he wanted.”
Ajago?
“They had double coverage and shut down his openings. They did a really good job on him. You have to give them credit.”
Still Duke took a 1-0 lead in the first half on Amir Daley’s first goal of the season.
Duke kept it for 20 plus minutes of the second. But WMU got the equalizer on a corner that kind of bounced around for awhile before bouncing into the goal.
Dylan Sing was credited with the goal, his 15th of the season.
“We score off a lot of corners,” Sing said. “We make really hard, dynamic runs and going into the game that was the game plan for us to get into the attack and try to score off set pieces.”
Duke almost won in the final seconds of regulation when WMU goalie Ethan Brand got a finger tip on a spectacularly well-executed free kick by Ruben Mesalles with the clock running down.
Sharp got the eventual game-winner in the first overtime.
How do you let the nation’s leading scorer get open in the box?
Well, Duke’s Kamran Acito had him marked before the 6-5 Sharp kind of re-directed him into the next zip code.
“From my angle, I saw Sharp use both hands and pull him aside, which allowed him to get the header in,” Kerr said. “From my angle it’s a foul. It’s a bummer the game was decided on that play.”
Looked like a foul from the Koskinen press box.
I guess it’s not a foul if they don’t call it, as they say.
Sharp credited Carson Hodgson for the assist, “to notice me on the back post and to give me a chance to go up and score it.”
Duke had a great chance to tie at 2-2 in the second overtime but Mesalles missed an open net and Duke’s season ended.
Kerr credited Mesalles with being in the right spot.
“Disappointing to not play better than we did,” Kerr summed up. “We didn’t do a good enough job holding the ball up with our forwards and bringing the ball up. I thought we did in the first half but in the second half they just shut that down.”
Duke has a number of key players who could use their COVID year in 2024 but Kerr said he’ll take a couple of days to decompress from this loss before having those conversations.
“I’m going to have to suffer here for a couple of days and look back and analyze this game in particular and analyze this season. But I’m not taking away from a wonderful season our guys put forward. We played some entertaining, goal-scoring soccer. And it’s really disappointing to end so early because I thought we had the ingredients to make a run and it really hurts, especially for those seniors and grad students who played so well all season.”
Sounds like we got the ‘Tennessee’ treatment. Too bad officials in many sports seem to swallow whistles come tournament time. Makes no sense to make a sport a different game when championships are on the line. Very disappointing to players and coaches who have excelled at a game all season to be thrust into something ‘different’ in a one and done tournament.