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Roth: Second Season A Good One For Duke Women?s Soccer
12/5/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
DURHAM, N.C. ? After an 8-5-6 regular season that barely earned them a spot in the ACC Tournament, the Duke women's soccer team enjoyed an exceptional postseason journey in advancing to the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals.
The Blue Devils advanced past South Carolina via a penalty kick shootout in the first round, then posted shutouts of Georgia (1-0) and Indiana (2-0) before finally falling to Notre Dame 3-2 in a chilly quarterfinal last Friday. The Fighting Irish move on to the Final Four at Texas A&M, where they will meet the lone ACC survivor, Florida State, in the semifinals.
For the Blue Devils, playing in their fifth straight NCAA, it marked the program's furthest advancement since the 1994 team reached the quarterfinals. All four tourney games were played on the road, with the latter three on the opponent's home field.
With the season complete for seventh-year coach Robbie Church, Blue Devil Weekly sought his perspective on his team's postseason run and final 10-6-7 record.
Blue Devil Weekly: What's your evaluation of the final game at Notre Dame?
Robbie Church: Overall we played fairly well. I would like to have the first half back because I thought we were a little tentative, probably because of our inexperience in being in the elite eight. In the second half we played better and became much more aggressive defensively, and that helped our offense.
I was obviously very proud, because when we were down two goals we could have easily folded our tent and the game could have gotten ugly. But we kept working and we kept telling them, let's get one goal back and put the pressure back on them. We were fortunate to get the first goal back off a redirection of a set play (by Kelly Hathorn). Then CJ Ludemann's goal that tied it up was just a big-time goal, a bomb from about 22 to 25 yards out, just a great shot.
There were about 23-24 minutes left and it was kind of game on at that point. I did think we spent a lot of energy getting the game tied up. At the end I thought we got just a little bit tired.
BDW: What kind of challenge was it to play all your tournament games on the road?
RC: It's tough to go on the road for four straight games, especially against some of the quality opponents we played. It showed the heart and character of our group. What we want to try to do in the future is to have stronger regular seasons so we can have some of these games in Koskinen Stadium.
But I was amazed at how focused we were during the tournament run. We really competed. The game against Notre Dame was one of our better ones in terms of competitiveness all season. I think it bodes well for the future because we have a number of players returning. I'm really excited about the future of our program.
BDW: It must be gratifying to see it all come together in the postseason after a regular season in which you barely made the ACC tourney.
RC: We actually were playing really well during the regular season but we just didn't score goals. We were close, we were around it. We had so many ties but a lot of them were against good teams. But I think it's a sign of a good team that we took advantage of our second season. That's one thing our league prepares you for. Our league is so tough every day, so when you get in the NCAA Tournament you're not going to see anything different that you didn't see in the regular season.
For the last month we basically had to play for our lives to get into the ACC Tournament first and then the NCAA Tournament. I think that really hardened us. By the time we got into the NCAA Tournament we knew what it was like to play that one-and-done deal. We had a couple of those in the regular season where if we didn't get points in this game, we may not be able to get in the ACC or NCAA Tournament.
BDW: What are the prospects for next year with only two seniors on this year's roster?
RC: We'll have high expectations for next year and that's what we want. We want high expectations because we want to be a national program. We want to go to final fours. We were 15 minutes away from it this year. We want to get there and go for national championships. Mentally and physically we'll have to step it up and prepare for it, but it's a great challenge and it's a position we want to be in.
Players Mentioned
D/M
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