Duke taking upset of Maryland in stride
One might figure that Duke’s 9-8 overtime defeat of then-No. 3 Maryland might be an occasion for coach John Danowski to gloat – or at least sound off on the folks who jumped off the bandwagon.
But that’s not Danowski’s style, and the coach of the No. 11 Blue Devils laughed at the idea of being content with Saturday’s win.
“We’re still young, and we’re 2-2,” he said Monday. “It was one game, one day. Who knows how you respond from this as a team? I’ve been around enough teams to know that over the long haul, by April 1, you know what kind of team you have – after you’ve played a bunch of games and have had a chance to be in a bunch of different situations. I just think it was one game – as much as [losing to] Penn was just one game and [losing to] Notre Dame was just one game. Where do you go from week-to-week? That’s the exciting part about coaching.”
A significant factor in Duke’s triumph was the job the defense did in limiting the Terps Big 3 of senior attackmen Grant Catalino, Ryan Young and Travis Reed. Danowski confirmed Inside Lacrosse’s account of the Blue Devils assigning senior Tom Montelli, a converted long-stick midfielder, on Catalino, freshman Chris Hipps on Young and sophomore Bill Conners on Reed.
Catalino did not score after taking just one shot and registered a lone assist, Young misfired on all five shots, and Reed went 0-for-4 with just one assist.
“They’re so terrific,” Danowski said. “They’re all seniors, they’ve played together, they have a chemistry between them, they’re kind of like the perfect parts. You’ve got a big, strong, right-handed shooter [in Catalino], a really dynamic left-handed scorer [in Reed], and then a feeder [in Young] to complement those two guys on either corner. So you just try to take a look at what they do and how they do it and match up your personnel and scheme them a little bit.”
Duke still has an arduous road ahead beginning with Friday night’s home contest against No. 8 Loyola. Danowski said he hopes Maryland don’t lose another game for the rest of the season.
“We’re going to root for Maryland for the rest of the year to win all their games,” he said. “We’ve become Maryland fans now. It’s a big game because it was an ACC game, and we hadn’t beaten Maryland in two years. But for this particular team at this particular time, it was just good to get a win.”
