Going into the national championship, Duke face-off specialist Brendan Fowler had already earned the NCAA single-season record for face-off wins.
While each face-off win doesn’t matter any more than the next when it comes to that record, the 20 that Fowler accumulated on Monday afternoon will mean a little more to Fowler.
After all, it was on his shoulders that Duke became the national champions, going on a 16-6 run from the second quarter until the end of the game to come back from an early Syracuse lead, ultimately winning, 16-10.
Fowler won 20 of 28 face-offs, allowing Duke (16-5) to maintain possession for the majority of the contest.
“Obviously winning face offs and getting the ball back makes it a lot easier to score goals,” Fowler said. “But early I violated a few times, kind of let it get to my head a little bit. Once I cooled down a little and stuck to what I do every day, got into a groove there and just felt pretty good going out there every time.”
That groove allowed Fowler to win 13 straight face-offs at one point in the contest.
The Blue Devils needed someone to step up after allowing Syracuse to break out to an early 5-0 lead.
And for them, that man was Fowler.
He earned the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award for his efforts in the face-off X.
But it was a testament not just to Fowler’s prowess, but the team’s mental fortitude to not allow being down by five serve as a death sentence.
“Nobody scripts being down 4-0 or 5-0,” Duke coach John Dankowski said. “And inside I think we were all freaking out…I think the big stage, the big event got to us a little bit. I think guys were a little tight, a little nervous.”
Once Duke started scoring the second quarter, however, there was a visible change in the Blue Devils’ demeanor.
On defense, they stood tall against a formidable Syracuse (16-4) offense and on offense, they weren’t afraid to attack.
“We wanted to play Duke lacrosse, and I think everyone saw that and it was evident when we started doing that,” Duke junior Josh Dionne said. “When our seniors got patient, we got patient, we went back to our smart spacing. I just think that’s just the way things were.”
Their seniors, led by Jake Tripucka, made their presence known at the start of the run that got Duke back into the game, when Tripucka found the back of the net.
After that, Duke’s younger starts, like Dionne and Jordan Wolfe, were able to take over. Dionne scored his seventh hat-trick of the season, while Wolfe had a game-high four calls.
By the fourth quarter, a Blue Devil victory was all but a guarantee.
But after allowing their focus to waver early in the contest, Duke made sure to stay focused even with the slanted score.
“We were up six goals and I just had to focus in until the buzzer,” Fowler said. “I think when they got that penalty at the end and we were man up with a few seconds left, I kind of let it sink in then, but until then we were just trying to stay focused and finish the game out.”
The national championship was Duke’s second overall, their last one coming in 2010 against Notre Dame.
But for Dankowski, he’ll remember this one for a long time.
“Every year is just this magical journey and there are bumps along the way and adversity and some teams can handle it and rise above it and some don’t,” Dankowski said.
“But the hope is that everybody learns from it.”
Duke faced adversity, and the result shows how much they learned this season.
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