What a game it was. It was all it was hyped up to be. The machine that is the Duke Blue Devils against the team from “out west,” but really from up north in Indiana. Many wanted to see a team off the east coast bring home a ring, but today that was not the case.
The players that were expected to play well did, such as Myles Jones, Matt Kavanagh, Jordan Wolf, etc. But my biggest takeaway from this championship game was the play of Sergio Perkovic. Like coach Kevin Corrigan said in his post-game press conference, Sergio is a star in the making and could be the best player to ever walk the halls of Notre Dame. Nothing against Myles Jones or Jordan Wolf, but Perkovic is a monster in my eyes as well.
I think the experience level of the Blue Devils came up big in this game and really showed down the stretch when time needed to be run off the clock and stops needed to be created. The leadership of Wolf and Lobb were huge with the absence of their fellow senior Josh Dione, who was injured in the quarterfinals against Johns Hopkins. Wolf had six points (two goals, four assists) and won the Most Outstanding Player award for the tournament.
Other takeaways were that Myles Jones is quite the athlete. The speed, vision and strength he shows and puts on defenders is nothing like anyone has ever seen in this game. The patience he had today and the ability to find teammates like Jordan Wolf was mind-blowing. Only a sophomore, this kid has two more years to learn to snipe from the outside and beat double teams; the NCAA better look out.
A couple goals by Deemer Class gave Duke a lead they would never relinquish.
What stood out most in this championship game was how Notre Dame was unable to find any good look at the goal in the first half and it eventually came back to bite them in the butt. They just ran out of time.
Kavanagh did not play his best game and in my opinion was absent when his team needed him most, the complete opposite of Jordan Wolf. Although he scored twice, he only took two shots. That is a great percentage obviously, but I want my star taking 10-15 shots, not two. That was a huge key to this game and give a ton of credit to Duke senior defenseman Henry Lobb for that.
Overall, like I said before this game was better than advertised. We had a late comeback but it just wasn’t enough. The fans were roaring whenever Notre Dame scored to make it close and I could feel it in my legs up in the box. This was a great day for the sport as a whole and congratulations to the Blue Devils.
