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Women?s Soccer Receives Invitation To NCAA College Cup
11/6/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
DURHAM, N.C. ? For the 13th time in school history, the Duke women's soccer team received an at-large invitation to play in the NCAA Women's College Cup on Monday and will travel to Knoxville, Tenn., on Friday, Nov. 10 for a 5:30 p.m. match against Louisville. The contest will be played at the Regal Soccer Stadium on the campus of the University of Tennessee.
Duke Head Coach Robbie Church on what went through his mind when he saw their name on the board, “Relief, joy. It is a chance for us to have another season. We learned a lot of things during the season. We have to close the door on that and were are all on 0-0 on the board now. We have to build on that and I am so glad we are able to stay together to play another game.”
Hosting the four-team subregional will be Tennessee (11-6-3) and the Lady Vols will take on UAB (8-11-1) in the first round. The winner of the Duke/Louisville contest will take on the winner of the Tennessee/UAB match on Sunday, Nov. 12 at 2:00 p.m.
The Blue Devils own a 9-8-2 overall record and finished with a 5-4-1 mark in Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) action in 2006. On the season, Duke has been led by a combination of upperclassmen and underclassmen as the top six scorers for the Blue Devils are either freshmen or seniors.
“We have to make sure we know if we play 90 minutes of aggressive, focused soccer that we can play with anybody in the country,” said Church. “We have to eliminate small amount of times during the course of the game where we have an offensive or defensive breakdown with it to. This gives us the opportunity to show we are actually a better team than our regular season. When we do that I like our odds against anybody we play.”
Freshman KayAnne Gummersall and freshman Elisabeth Redmond, who were each selected to the All-ACC Freshman team, owns 16 and 13 points, respectively, to lead the squad. Gummersall, who is a product of Wilmette, Ill., owns seven goals, two assists and three game-winning goals, while Redmond has registered a team-best seven assists, three goals-- all of which were game winners.
Other top scorers for the Blue Devils have been senior Sarah McCabe (five goals), senior Rebecca Moros (four goals), senior Darby Kroyer (four goals) and senior Lauren Tippets (three goals/four assists).
Louisville received its first NCAA Tournament selection in school history after registering a school-record 13 victories this season. The Cardinals advanced to the first round of the Big East Tournament before falling to sixth-ranked West Virginia, 5-4, in penalty kicks, after was no score through 110 minutes of play.
Tennessee is coming off a 2-0 loss to Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference Tournament and is making its sixth straight appearance in the NCAA College Cup. UAB earned the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament after defeating Colorado College, 3-2, in the Conference USA Championship.
Both the ACC and Big East received a league-best seven selections to the tournament.
“We are really excited and were shocked it was the first bracket [released],” said Kroyer. “It was a sign of relief too because our season has been so up and down. We have worked really hard so it is good that we get a chance to finish off strong.”
The NCAA Division I College Cup will be played Dec. 1, 3 at the SAS Soccer Complex in Cary, N.C.
“Trying to step back a little bit and looking at it, our RPI was extremely high, our quality of schedule was high and we had significant wins,” said commented Church on if he thought Duke was in. “I believed [we were in], but then there is a certain part of you when they close those doors and get in those closed rooms you are not quite sure what is going to happen with it. I felt we deserved to be in, people across the country told me we deserve to be in, but you never know until you see your name on the board.”
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