For the first time since 2011, the Maryland field hockey team was shutout.
Back then, Old Dominion held the Terps scoreless. Fourth-ranked Duke did the same exactly five years later, earning a 1-0 win Friday night in the opening game of the Big Ten/ACC Cup.
The loss moves the No. 6 Terps to 1-2 in 2016 and marks the first time Maryland has lost two of their first three games since 1996.
Duke scored the game’s only goal in the 42nd minute, when forward Ashley Kristen tipped in a long pass to give her team a lead that would hold up for the final 28 minutes.
After the Terps’ first loss of the season, a 4-1 defeat at the hands of No. 2 Syracuse on Sunday, the team thought the stats showed that the match was much more even than the final score suggested. The Orange took just one more shot than Maryland and had one less penalty corner.
In Friday’s loss, the stats show the Terps not only hanging around the Blue Devils, but also outplaying them.
Maryland outshot the Blue Devils, 12-7, including a 9-5 advantage in the first half. Duke sophomore goalkeeper Sammi Steele came up huge for her team, making seven saves in the first half and adding two more in the second period. All but two of the Terps’ shots were on goal.
The Terps held an even larger penalty corner advantage than they did Sunday, earning four corner chances and surrendering just one. But just as they struggled against Syracuse, Maryland couldn’t convert any of those opportunities.
Terps goalkeeper Sarah Holliday made two saves in the game and allowed one goal, and for the first time this season, Sarah Bates did not replace her. The only time Meharg pulled Holliday was when the Terps chose to have an empty net with two and a half minutes to play.
A little over 10 minutes before electing to play with no goalkeeper, freshman midfielder Kelee Lepage nearly found the equalizer for the Terps, hitting the post with a shot in the 56th minute. She attempt was Maryland’s last shot of the game.
The losses to Syracuse and Duke mean that, for the first time since the 1997 and 1998 seasons, the Terps have lost consecutive games in consecutive seasons. In 2015, Maryland lost three consecutive games early in the year before rattling off 18 straight wins.
Meharg’s team will look to avoid going 1-3 for just the second time in program history — and the first since 1976 — when they close out the Big Ten/ACC Cup on Sunday against No. 8 Boston College.