Can of Whoop ACC: Duke Crunches Hokies
from press release
BLACKSBURG, Va. - The Duke University women's lacrosse
team used a dominating, 18-6 performance over Virginia Tech
Wednesday afternoon at Thompson Field to secure its first ACC win
of the season. With the victory, Duke moves to 8-1 overall and 1-1
in the conference, while the Hokies fall to 2-6 (0-2 ACC).
The Blue Devil offense fired 42 shots, 33 on goal, en route to its
second-highest scoring output of the season, and the Duke defense
limited Virginia Tech to 13 shots for the game. Duke also committed
a season-low seven turnovers to control the time of possession
throughout.
"For us, it was a great effort," head coach Kerstin Kimel said. "We
wanted to come away from today with a really solid performance. I
think that we did that; we were able to play a lot of kids and we
came away with a double-digit win. Any day you can do that is good
one."
Ten Devils registered goals in the match, led by senior Lindsay
Gilbride's five-goal performance. Junior Christie Kaestner tallied
five points on a goal and a game-high four assists and classmate
Sarah Bullard notched a hat trick for team-leading eighth
multi-goal game of the season. Sophomore Amanda Jones recorded two
goals and an assist, senior Christie Barnes had two goals and
sophomore Kat Thomas tallied a goal, an assist and five draw
controls.
In addition, four Duke players notched their first goals of the
season in the match, including junior Miller Hughes and sophomore
Bridget Nolan as well as freshmen Makenzie Hommel and Alyssa
Ogle.
"The fact that we had 10 kids score alludes to the kind of
offensive fire power that we have on this team. Every game, we've
had one of our main attackers step up and it's been different
people every game, which is great."
Despite the final score, Duke found itself down by one in the early
going as Tech netted the first score of the match. The Blue Devils
would not trail for long, however, and were up 3-1 by the 19:28
mark. The Hokies pulled within one minutes later, but four
unanswered Devil goals put the game out of reach, and the Blue
Devils would take a 9-3 advantage into the intermission.
A 7-0 run to start the second half put Duke up 16-3 with 15 minutes
remaining. Virginia Tech would outscore Duke 3-2 to close out the
game to bring the score to its final 18-6 margin.
Freshman Kaitlin Gaiss made three saves for her second career win
and junior Casey Beyel saw her first action of the season in goal,
stopping one Hokie shot.
Duke will return to action Sunday, March 21 at home against Navy.
Game time is scheduled for 1 p.m.
