Duke Pounds Georgetown, Reaches 15th Championship Weekend

NEWARK, Del. — The back half of May is a time to mind all the details, never knowing which one might extend a lacrosse season by another six or seven days.

Duke’s 16-6 pounding of Georgetown in Sunday’s NCAA quarterfinal suggests the Blue Devils covered every nuance imaginable.

“During the week, it just felt like every single person was ready,” midfielder Max Sloat said.

Sloat had four goals and an assist as Duke (11-4) marauded its way into the semifinals for the first time since 2023. The first unseeded team to reach the season’s final weekend since Towson in 2017, the Blue Devils will play top-seeded Princeton (15-2) at noon on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va.

Benn Johnston scored three goals in the second half and Kyle Colsey had two goals and two assists for the Blue Devils, who recorded the most lopsided quarterfinal victory for any team since Virginia’s 14-3 dismantling of Georgetown in 2021.

“I told the guys earlier in the week that the quarterfinal is the hardest game to win because there’s the specter of the final four on the other side of this,” head coach John Danowski said. “There’s a tendency where you can play really tight, and I don’t think we saw any of that today from our guys.”

As free and easy as Duke was, Georgetown was every bit as flummoxed and far too often timid. The Hoyas (11-5) scored 34 seconds in, then went more than 32 minutes without another goal as things quickly unraveled.

Jack Ransom scored twice for Georgetown, which joined the 2002-07 Hoyas and 1986-89 Navy as the only programs to lose in the quarterfinals in at least four consecutive seasons.

It also marked a 12th consecutive quarterfinal loss for Georgetown dating back to 2000.

“They were more athletic, they were on our hands,” Georgetown coach Kevin Warne said. “We just looked like we were waiting instead of just attacking. I think that caught up to us.”

It’s the latest step in Duke’s remarkable in-season resurrection. The Blue Devils lost four in a row starting in late March after an 8-0 start against largely manageable competition, giving them a decent record but a modest postseason profile.

They were already assured of missing the ACC tournament heading into their regular-season finale at North Carolina but stunned the Tar Heels to remain alive. After receiving more than enough help the next week to land an at-large berth. Duke opened the NCAA tournament with a 14-12 comeback victory at Richmond to find itself a game away from its 14th trip to the semifinals in the last 21 tournaments.

By Thursday, Danowski thought his team was restless, cranky and ready to play. And senior defenseman Charlie Johnson found himself getting more and more nervous as the week went along.

He considered it a welcome development.

“If I’m not super psyched up, if I don’t feel that pit in my stomach, then maybe I’m not entirely ready to go,” Johnston said. “And I was pretty nervous, so it was a good sign. … This senior class is the only class on this team that’s been to the final four, that’s been to the national championship, and I’m so proud of the nine of us in our senior class, the leadership we showed this week to remind the guys that it is possible, that we are here.”

Duke extinguished any questions about whether it would play on fairly quickly. Sloat scored twice as the Blue Devils built a 3-1 lead after a quarter, and a victory already started to feel inevitable after Colsey and faceoff man Cal Girard scored four seconds apart to make it 5-1 with 9:15 left in the first half.

After Georgetown closed within 6-2 with the first goal after the break, Duke rattled off the next four. The only question from there was just how large the final margin would be.

“Offensively, we shared the ball — 10 assisted goals out of the 16,” Danowski said. “I thought defensively we were physical and cleared the ball well. And really the game from our perspective was very clean.”

Warne’s teams have dropped quarterfinals in five of the last six seasons, but those were mostly more competitive showings than Sunday. In 2023, they scored 14 goals against Virginia but were overcome by a peak Connor Shellenberger performance. Two seasons ago, the Hoyas ran into a Notre Dame buzzsaw on Long Island and lost by five. Last year, they pestered Maryland for much of the afternoon before falling 9-6.

Even in the 2021 loss to Virginia, there was a mitigating circumstance: Faceoff man James Reilly’s jarring injury on the opening draw of the game. The dazed Hoyas were down 10-1 at halftime before limiting the Cavaliers to four goals in the second half.

Against Duke on Sunday, Georgetown committed 11 first-half turnovers, then gave up 10 goals in the final 30 minutes as the Blue Devils wore down a weary defense.

“There’s not a lot to talk about after that,” Warne said. “They’re really good. They earned the right to go play next week. And for us, I’m very proud of this senior group. You get a chance to leave a legacy as a class. Those guys did with their fourth straight quarterfinal, and I was really proud of them for that. But today was not our day.”

It most definitely was Duke’s. Given the context of the season, it is one of the more improbable postseason runs for the Blue Devils, whose 15th visit to the semifinals puts them ahead of Tobacco Road rival North Carolina for the first time ever. (The Tar Heels already had 12 when Duke had its first Memorial Day weekend breakthrough in 1997.)

Simultaneously, Duke couldn’t have looked the part of a title contender more than it did on Sunday, brushing aside another unseeded team with ease and sauntering back onto the sport’s greatest stage.

“It feels like it’s been a really long season where we’ve just waited and waited our turn that we always knew would come at some point, that we knew we were capable of,” Sloat said. “Now it feels like it’s come to fruition.”