It was another slow start for the University of Utah soccer team (4-2-1) who was in Durham, North Carolina, to face No. 11 Duke (7-1-0) on Monday, Sept. 11. It was a matchup that head coach Rich Manning was looking forward to, not just because both teams were ranked, but because the competition would help his team prepare for Pac-12 play.
Although the first goal wasn’t scored until the second half, it was the Utes who took the shot to take the first lead of the game. Duke came back to tie the score up before taking the lead late into the second half, bringing the game to a 2-1 victory in favor of Duke.
“I’m really proud of the team, but at the same time, this one stung,” Manning said. “We gave tremendous effort and played with a lot of competitive spirit. I think we played with the confidence we needed to win the game against an outstanding team and that’s why the team is disappointed because we feel like if we get within 10 minutes of winning the game, we need to close up shop and make sure they don’t get the equalizer or the win.”
In the first half, Utah didn’t get a shot on goal until Paola Van der Veen took a chance late in the half. Duke out shot Utah in the first half, 5-1. The Blue Devils took their first shot of the match one minute into the game, followed by another shot and corner kick over the course of eight minutes. Heading into the half, the Utes and their opponent were tied, 0-0.
Things turned around for the Utes in the second half when they got the first goal of the game in the 48th minute by Van der Veen. The goal was assisted by Holly Daugirda and Haylee Cacciacarne, and went down as Van der Veen’s sixth goal of the season.
“The ball went wide to Holly,” Van der Veen said. “She got a very good cross, and the only thing I had to do was come near the post and hit it in the back of the net. Luckily, that worked out and we defended that 1-0 for a solid 40 minutes.”
Duke put up its first goal of the game to tie the score in the 81st minute. Seconds later, Duke scored again. Utah struggled to get a chance to even the score to take the game into overtime.
“I think we played a very good game,” Van der Veen said. “We held up for 80 minutes against a very good team. Unfortunately, they scored two goals in the last 10 minutes, but we did a lot of good things this game. We played awesome defense and held up [Duke’s] attacking. We lost focus for one second and that’s how they scored their goal and their second goal was kind of lucky. It was a good shot and the wind kind of took it, but we couldn’t take the win.”
Up next for the Utes, they will head back home to face Kansas on Friday, Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. MT on the Ute Soccer Field.
“We are going to continue to look at defending, being organized and understanding our roles defensively,” Manning said. “Our offense needs to find more opportunities to create more chances because we only had six shots during the [Duke] game and we would like to get more than that.”
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