After a highlight-reel free-position goal Saturday that featured a perfectly placed shot into the goal's upper right corner, Katie Schwarzmann jogged to the bench wincing, her anguish evident.
Moments earlier, a breakaway opportunity had been interrupted by a vicious cross-check that resulted in a Duke yellow card — not to mention a bloodied right knee and tender left ankle for the Terrapin women's lacrosse midfielder.
"I think it fired us up a little bit," attacker Karri Ellen Johnson said of the play. "We were like, ‘That's our teammate,' you know."
About four minutes later, after a quick tape job and series of sideline tests, Schwarzmann returned. Two minuts into action, she scored her fifth and final goal, ensuring the Blue Devils wouldn't get any closer.
With a dominant showing, the No. 1 Terps (4-0, 1-0 ACC) captured their fourth straight win against the No. 3 Blue Devils, 18-11, at the Field Hockey & Lacrosse Complex on Saturday.
An evenly matched first half ended on a high note for the Terps, as Kristy Black and Schwarzmann scored in the final 38 seconds to give the team a 9-7 lead.
The first half featured six ties and two lead changes, as the teams posted near-identical totals in shots (18-15, Terps), ground balls (8-6, Terps) and saves (5-4, Blue Devils) before the Terps grabbed the momentum in the half's last minute.
"Duke's a really talented team, and I'm really pleased with our team's effort," coach Cathy Reese said. "I thought we had a great second half. We were able to change some things at halftime and really make some adjustments defensively and just step it up in the second half, and that was what we needed to do in order to come away with this win."
While the Terps did not repeat their 17-4 thrashing of Duke (3-1, 0-1) in Durham, N.C., from last year, the nation's top-ranked squad dominated possession in the second half, allowing only four goals to one of the nation's best offenses.
"We knew that we needed to play really well defensively against them," Reese said. "We talked about [that] at halftime. We talked about tightening up some things, helping each other a little more, sliding into the middle and taking away some openings, and we did a much better job to hold them to fewer goals in the second half."
Johnson and Schwarzmann paced the Terps with five goals apiece, while attacker Sarah Mollison netted a hat trick.
Midfielder Laura Merrifield, the team's captain, made her first appearance of the season, focusing her contributions on the defensive end, according to Reese.
"It's one of those games where we're going to be happy for a day," Johnson said. "But we know that we have a target on our back."
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