Over the next nine days, we will be looking at the top nine stories of the year in lacrosse, based off of our most read and covered stories. Today is #3 with the Duke Blue Devils NCAA championship.
Duke lacrosse won their second title in the last five years when they defeated the Syracuse Orange this year to win the 2013 NCAA lacrosse championship. Their road was not an easy one with such a tough field in the NCAA tournament.
The Blue Devils opened their season with a 14-12 loss to Denver before beating Jacksonville, but then they fell to Notre Dame and two games later were upset by Pennsylvania and then lost to Maryland. Their season started at 2-4 as they fell in the rankings.
But then Duke went on a roll, losing only one more time and that was to North Carolina. They finished 16-5 and won 14 of their last 15 games to make the NCAA tournament.
Duke started the NCAA tournament by just getting past the Loyola Greyhounds 12-11, defeating the 2012 champions. Duke faced Notre Dame in the elite eight and just got by them by a 12-11 score, led by five goals from David Lawson.
Next they were on to face Cornell and they defeated the Big Red and Tewaaraton winner Rob Pannell 16-14. Cornell went up 3-1 early in that game before Duke stormed back for a 6-3 second quarter. Following that was a 7-1 third but Cornell scored seven times in the fourth to make it a tight game. This led to Duke advancing to the championship.
In the NCAA championship the Blue Devils faced the Syracuse Orange. Syracuse had a bit of an easier path; they defeated Denver in the final four, which was tough, but before that they beat Yale and Bryant.
Duke was shut out in the first quarter as Syracuse took a 4-0 lead. But the ‘Devils exploded, with five, five and six goal totals in the next three quarters to take the game at a comfortable 16-10 score. Jordan Wolf scored six points and Josh Offit five while Josh Dionne scored a hat trick.
Duke had an incredible comeback in the regular season to even get to the championship, and they proved to be worthy champions.
