Hopkins Lays Low Duke's Stars to Advance

Tight Defense, Goalie, Long Possessions Stop Top-Seeded Blue Devils : Johns Hopkins 10, Duke 9

FOXBOROUGH, Mass., May 24 -- In the NCAA men's lacrosse record books, Duke attackmen Matt Danowski and Zack Greer are the all-time leading scorer and all-time leading goal scorer, respectively, in history.

In playoff games against Johns Hopkins, they are something else. For the third time dating from 2005, the Blue Jays handled Danowski and Greer well enough to defeat Duke, this time by a 10-9 score before 48,224 on Saturday at Gillette Stadium.

The fifth-seeded Blue Jays (11-5) advanced to play No. 3 Syracuse (15-2) for the title on Monday at 1 p.m. Each team has won nine national titles.

Two of those Hopkins titles came at Duke's expense. In 2005 and 2007, the Blue Jays defeated Duke in the championship by one goal.

Greer entered on Saturday with 205 goals. Yet fifth-year senior Eric Zerrlaut held Greer to one goal on four shots. Including the 2005 and 2007 title games, Greer is 1 for 11 in the playoffs against Hopkins.

Danowski, meantime, entered with 350 career points. Junior Michael Evans defended Danowski and held him to 2-for-10 shooting. In the three playoff games, Danowski was 5 for 28 (17.8 percent), though he also had six assists.

On the occasions that Greer and Danowski eluded their defenders, sophomore goalkeeper Michael Gvozden was there: He finished with 17 saves, including five on Danowski and three on Greer.

"People talk about the matchup with me and [Danowski] all week," Evans said. "Matt's a great player. He got his looks, [but] Mike made some great saves."

Duke (18-2) entered as the No. 1 seed yet, history was stacked against it. Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Syracuse or Virginia has won every national title since 1992.

The stranglehold of the top four teams was such that even Duke's 17-6 victory over Johns Hopkins on April 5 was interpreted as a bad omen.

In the history of the NCAA tournament, two teams have lost a regular season game by 10 or more goals and come back to win the national title. Both times, those teams -- North Carolina in 1986 and Syracuse in 2004 -- defeated the team to which it lost by double digits in the semifinal.

Johns Hopkins has not clinched the national title, but it clearly entered Saturday's semifinal with confidence.

Duke, meantime, may not have. In its walk-through at the stadium on Friday, a longtime observer noticed how many times the Blue Devils threw away the ball, even in drills without defensive players.

That pattern continued in the game, as the Blue Devils finished with 15 turnovers, at least six of which were unforced.

In its regular season victory, Duke had five goals in six-on-six situations. The rest came in transition (five goals), extra-man (four), immediately following a faceoff (two) and off a failed clear (one).

The Blue Jays did their part to limit Duke's transition chances by slowing the game. Duke had success when it went up-tempo: It scored three goals in 45 seconds early in the fourth quarter and two goals in six seconds midway through the fourth.

"Obviously your offense is your best defense and your faceoffs are your best defense," Johns Hopkins Coach Dave Pietramala said. "We got goaltending. When you have goaltending and you clear the ball, you have possessions. That's your best defense."

Duke tied the game at 8 following a goal by fifth-year senior defenseman Nick O'Hara with 7 minutes 7 seconds to play. Six seconds later, however, O'Hara was called for an illegal body check. And sophomore Steven Boyle scored on extra-man following an assist from classmate Michael Kimmel.

The Blue Jays led 10-8 after Kimmel fed senior Kevin Huntley (game-high four goals) for a goal with 4:18 to play. That was the score when, with 43 seconds left, sophomore Max Quinzani had a one-on-one with Gvozden. His close shot hit Gvozden's helmet and bounced away.

Duke closed to 10-9 following a goal by senior Brad Ross with 28 seconds left.

Following a turnover, Duke gained possession and called timeout with 3.9 seconds left. It drew up a play for Danowski against Evans.

Danowski inbounded the ball, ran toward the middle of the field and took a long shot that Gvozden saved.

The start of Saturday's game was delayed by several minutes for television. Duke Coach John Danowski and his staff sat on the team bench and appeared relaxed.

The Johns Hopkins coaches remained on the field, exhorting their team through a series of drills. It was a similar approach to the title game last year.

Danowski had told his team to relax. Pietramala had taken a more strenuous approach.

"They've been in these situations before," Matt Danowski said. "And it seemed like nothing really fazed them throughout the game."