Duke Falls to Maryland in ACC Opener

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Saturday, February 27

Durham, N.C.

12:00 p.m.

Duke University

Maryland

Duke Falls to Maryland in ACC Opener

2/27/2010 3:00:00 PM | Women's Lacrosse

By: Duke Sports Information

DURHAM, N.C. - Three Terrapins registered hat tricks and the Duke University women's lacrosse team was unable to match the Maryland attack, falling to the Terps 17-4 Saturday afternoon at Koskinen Stadium.

No. 2 Maryland remains undefeated, improving to 3-0 (1-0 ACC) on the year, while Duke falls to 4-1 (0-1 ACC) for the season. The Blue Devils, who entered the match averaging 17.0 goals per game, were held to their lowest scoring output since falling 7-4 against No. 1 Princeton on Mar. 16, 2005.

Junior Sarah Bullard with three scores and sophomore Kat Thomas with one goal led the Duke offense, but could not negate a balanced Maryland offense, which saw nine players net goals. As a team, the Terps outshot the Devils 32-19 for the game, while also holding the advantage in draw controls, 14-9, and ground balls, 23-13.

"Our offense really didn't execute the way we wanted to or the way we're capable of," said head coach Kerstin Kimel, "Maryland clearly did; they didn't do a whole lot wrong on the field. We made mistakes that we haven't been making, and you just can't do that against Maryland. They made us pay for just about every mistake."

Maryland began the game with a 4-0 run over the first 17:09 and never looked back. Bullard cut the lead to 4-1 at the 10:51 mark, but the Terps responded with five unanswered scores to close out the half with a 9-1 advantage.

The intermission did not slow the Terrapin attack, which netted three more goals before Thomas notched a free position goal to bring the score to 12-2 halfway through the second frame. Bullard found the back of the net four minutes later for her second score of the game, but again Maryland had the answer, extending its lead to 15-3 with five minutes to play.

"I thought we did some really good things defensively," Kimel added, "we took Maryland out of their rhythm at times, but then we could turn around and give up a really easy goal. You can't put all that effort and make a great defensive play, then turn around and give up a junk goal. Clearly we have a lot of growing to do. This is hopefully one of those games where we'll watch the film, we'll learn a lot and then we'll throw it away. We'll just move past it, we have to. I'm glad we have a whole week to get ready for Princeton, and I know we'll do a great job of turning this around and working hard this week."

Duke faces another challenge next weekend as the Blue Devils travel to No. 9 Princeton on Saturday, Mar. 6 for a 1 p.m. match-up.

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