Duke Earns Third Straight College Cup Selection; Seeded Third In Bracket

DURHAM, N.C. ? For the 12th time in school history, the Duke women's soccer team received an at-large invitation to play in the NCAA Tournament on Monday and will travel to New Haven, Conn., on Friday, Nov. 11 for a 4:00 p.m. match against Fairfield. The contest will be played at the Yale Soccer/Lacrosse Stadium.

“We are honored to be in the tournament,” said Duke Head Coach Robbie Church. “We started with over 300 teams and now we are down to 64. Obviously, we would have loved to been hosting and thought we did enough to host. We also understand how this works with the geographics. It is a tough bracket and we are going to have to play very well to be able to advance out of it.”

The Blue Devils are seeded third in their part of the bracket after posting a 13-5-1 overall record. Duke entered last week's play ranked ninth in the nation and went on to defeat 13th-ranked Boston College, 2-0, in the ACC Tournament before falling in the semifinals, 2-1, to third-ranked North Carolina.

Leading the Duke charge this season has been the Blue Devil defense, which is spearheaded by ACC Defensive Player of the Year Carolyn Ford. On the year, Duke has tallied 10 shutouts and allowed only 11 goals in 19 matches. In goal for the Blue Devils has been sophomore Allison Lipsher, who has collected nine shutouts and a 0.55 goals against average. On the scoring front, junior tri-captain Darby Kroyer leads the squad with six goals and 14 points.

“I am excited to play Fairfield because it is one game at a time at this point,” said Ford. “I am not going to look ahead at this time.”

Duke will take on Fairfield, who won the MAAC Tournament to earn a berth in the College Cup. Fairfield owns a 10-6-3 overall record and is led by Alex Caram with five goals and six assists on the year.

On the other side of the draw is host Yale (13-3-1) and Central Connecticut (17-3). The Bulldogs will be making their third NCAA Tournament appearance, but will be hosting for the first time. Yale owns one of the top defenses in the nation allowing only 10 goals in 17 matches.

Central Connecticut earned its fourth straight Northeast Conference Tournament Championship with a 1-0 win over Long Island this past Sunday and is led by Jessica McCavanagh with 10 goals and two assists on the year.

The winners of the two contests will advance to play on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 1:00 p.m. in New Haven, Conn.

Overall, the ACC received a tournament-best seven invitations to play in the College Cup. It marks the third straight year the Blue Devils have been shipped away from home in the first two rounds after having a stellar regular season.

“I am really disappointed for our eight seniors,” said Church. “Because we really wanted to play at home and have at least the first two games at home for them. We thought we had done enough on our resume to be at home. We also understand with the NCAA it is a cost question-- instead of flying three teams into Durham it is much easier to fly one team out than flying three teams in. This happened to us two years ago when they sent us to Texas A&M. We were the seeded team and we went to Texas and played against three Texas teams.”

The NCAA Division I College Cup will be played Dec. 2, 4 at Aggie Soccer Stadium in College Station, Texas.

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