What started out as an misfortunate own goal against Duke actually represented the struggles that the Georgia women’s soccer team would have all night in keeping the Blue Devils offensive attack at bay.

Georgia soccer coach Steve Holeman

Duke (19-3-1) on a cold, windy Friday night in Durham, N.C., proved first hand why they are one of the best teams in the country and why they received a No.1 seed, dominating the time of possession as they beat Georgia 3-1 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament and thus ending the Bulldogs season.

“Duke is probably the best team we faced all season,” head coach Steve Holeman said. “They’re the number one seed in the tournament and they played liked it. They’re a team that I think could potentially win the national championship. They are just that good, they are that dangerous. With that said I thought we played well, I thought we played hard. I think that they probably got the best of us in the second half. Keeping it into perspective I think we had a pretty good season.”

The Blue Devils maintained possession for looked like the entire game, constantly keeping the Georgia (13-7-2) defense on its toes. Even a scheme change by Holeman, putting five defenders on the back line to help keeper Ashley Baker, was still not enough to stop the high powered Duke offense that beat Radford 5-0 in the first round of the tournament last week.

“A lot of teams we play against have one dangerous forward, especially at the highest level,” Holeman said. “Duke actually has three and all three of their forwards are extremely dangerous. They are all good running at you one vs. one. We felt tactically that we didn’t want them to receive the ball and face us up so with five in the back we felt like we would always be tight on them. I think our game plan worked out perfectly, not in terms of getting the result in the end but in what we wanted to accomplish. We just weren’t able to generate a whole lot in the attack.”

But even though Duke maintained possession of the ball the Georgia defense remained stout for much of the first half. Unfortunately it was an unfortunate bounce of the ball in the 36th minute that gave Duke its first goal of the night when Duke senior Molly Lester served a ball into the 18-yard box that was accidentally knocked in by a cutting Bailey Powell who was simply trying to mark her player for the own goal giving Duke a 1-0 lead going into the half.

“We went into halftime down a goal but our team still had belief, we didn’t give up but (the own goal) was unfortunate,” Holeman said. “The last thing you need to happen is to give up an own goal. Duke already has the edge in the sheer fact that they are one of the best teams in the country. It wasn’t great that that happened but our girls kept fighting.”

The story was much of the same in the second half for the Duke offense as the ball seemingly never left the Georgia side of the ball. The Blue Devils managed 14 second half shots while Kaitlyn Kerr found a home in the Georgia 18 as she had chance after chance to add to the Duke lead.

The Blue Devils even had an answer for Georgia’s top scorer, sophomore Alexa Newfield limiting her to just one shot the entire evening, choosing to foul her almost every time she dribbled the ball over midfield instead of giving her any opportunities to score. Without Newfield, who became the first player in Georgia history to have 40 points in a season, the rest of the offense struggled, managing only seven shots for the game.

“It wasn’t just Lex, anybody on our team that received the ball and held on to it for more than two seconds, [Duke] would have two players on us and if we held on to it for more than that, they would have three players on us,” Holeman said. “Duke is a team that plays high pressure and they are very athletic. They are very fit, they are mobile and they just press the ball and if your speed of play isn’t good you’re not going to hold on to the ball.”

So with no offensive pressure by the Bulldogs to help relieve the constant peppering against their defense Duke finally wore the Bulldogs down as they gave up two goals late to give Duke a 3-0 lead.

The first, in the 67th minute when a cross by Mollie Pathman was headed in by a wide open Laura Weinberg and then seven minutes later when Kerr finally got a goal to go in.

Georgia sophomore Nicole Locandro put in Georgia’s lone goal with nine minutes left in the game but it was all for not as the Bulldogs’ season ended in 3-1 loss.