Good teams, Duke head coach Kerstin Kimel told her team on Wednesday, know how to win ugly.

In her mind, this year’s Blue Devils squad is one of those teams. Their first game following last weekend’s huge 16-10 takedown of then-No. 13 Virginia came on Tuesday against East Carolina, and it didn’t get off to the start Kimel had envisioned.

Sure, Duke scored seven goals in the opening 15 minutes, but then it went quiet for the rest of the first half and allowed the Pirates to hang within four goals.

But the Blue Devils responded and held East Carolina scoreless for 23 minutes in the second half. Then the Blue Devils found their offensive rhythm again and put seven straight goals on the board.

“It was not our best game of the year, but as we talked about [on Wednesday] in film, good teams have to be able to win those games,” Kimel said. “They have to be able to rebound, and I thought our kids did a really good job of that.”

It’s been an up-and-down first half of the 2020 schedule for Duke. All three of its losses have come to ranked opponents — to Northwestern, Navy and Notre Dame, all by four scores or less — and the Blue Devils have floated in and out of the polls themselves.

Yet especially after the win over the Cavaliers — the program’s first triumph over Virginia since 2016 and first over a ranked opponent since an ACC tournament quarterfinal upset over Notre Dame last spring — Duke seems like it’s finally finding its groove.

“That performance against Virginia has been building in us, and to our team’s credit, they have just stayed really focused and really mentally tough,” Kimel said. “They’ve never gotten down on themselves. I think that game against Virginia was the culmination of learning good lessons, and then practicing really hard and staying focused as we go through each week of the season.”

That’s driven by the defensive performances the Blue Devils have strung together in recent games. Junior Chase Henriquez split the starting job in cage with sophomore Sophia LeRose for the team’s first six games, but after playing all 60 minutes in each of the last three games and tallying 32 saves in that time, appears to have won the job outright.

Things are clicking on the offensive end, too. Sophomore attacker Maddie Jenner is the nation’s second-leading draw specialist, averaging 10.56 controls per game, and eight players have already scored double-digit goals on the year.

Duke was scheduled to face No. 11 Penn on Saturday, but that game has since been canceled after the Ivy League canceled all athletic events for the remainder of the spring over coronavirus concerns.

The Blue Devils are slated to next play Elon on March 17 and Boston College on March 21, both at home in Durham.

Notre Dame on Collision Course with UNC

And the Irish keep rolling along.

No. 2 Notre Dame kept its undefeated season intact and stormed to a 16-6 win over Vanderbilt on Tuesday. The Irish scored 11 goals to start the game and improved to 7-0 for the second straight season. Notre Dame had the edge over the Commodores in nearly every category — 17-7 in draw controls, 26-14 in shots and 17-13 in ground balls.

The program’s longest undefeated streak in the last five years is nine games, set at the start of last season, and it’s plausible that they might break that record this year. One big obstacle stands in the way, and it’s a matchup against No. 1 North Carolina on Saturday.

The Fighting Irish were one of only two teams to beat the Tar Heels in 2019, and the other two — Maryland and Boston College — ended up in the national championship game. The seven goals North Carolina scored in that game on March 31 were the fewest it scored throughout the entire 2019 season.

Notre Dame will need another defensive performance of that caliber when the two face off in Chapel Hill this time around. The Fighting Irish have never won in a meeting on the Tar Heels’ home turf, but they’ve already done their share of history-making this 2020 season. Who’s to say this weekend might not bring some more?

NUMBERS OF NOTE

34

No. 7 Florida’s goal total across its past two games. The Gators struggled to find the back of the net in a 13-9 loss to No. 6 Dartmouth on March 3 but have rebounded with two back-to-back 17-goal performances in wins over High Point on March 7 and Navy on Tuesday. Florida’s two-pronged attack of Brianna Harris and Shannon Kavanagh has produced 61 goals for the Gators this season, 10 of which came on Tuesday against the Midshipmen.

7

The total number of wins American had in 2019 — at the time, the most for the program since 2013. Seven is also the number of wins the Eagles have already this 2020 season, and they still have more than half of their schedule to play. American is one of six undefeated teams left in Division I, and after a blazing start — their offense has put up 18 or more goals in every game so far — it’ll be fascinating to see what comes next once Patriot League play gets underway. Circle a March 25 matchup with still-undefeated No. 3 Loyola on your calendar.

5

Individual offensive categories in which No. 9 Northwestern’s Izzy Scane ranks in the top 20 in the country. The sophomore has had a show-stopping run so far, powering the Wildcats’ high-powered, top-ranked offense, most recently scoring eight goals against No. 1 North Carolina on Monday. Scane has cracked the top 20 for best free-position percentage (No. 11), total points (No. 17), points per game (No. 18), goals per game (No. 8) and total goals (No. 8) so far this season.