Duke Advances to Championship Monday on Leadmon OT Goal

Philadelphia — Duke men’s lacrosse midfielder Garrett Leadmon scored a diving goal on the crease 1:05 into overtime to send the top-seeded Blue Devils to Championship Monday with a 16-15 victory over Penn State in front of 32,107 fans at Lincoln Financial Field. The Blue Devils advance to their seventh NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship game.

Leadmon finished with a hat trick, the sixth of his career, while Brennan O’Neill had three goals and an assist to lead all Blue Devil scorers. Junior Jake Naso was excellent at the faceoff dot, winning 22-of-34, including the one in overtime, picking up 13 ground balls and scoring two goals and an assist.

How it Happened

It was a back-and-forth affair for 60 minutes featuring five ties and two lead changes. After a 3-1 run from Penn State in the first quarter gave the Nittany Lions a 4-3 lead, the Blue Devils answered with goals from O’Neill and Leadmon for the 5-4 advantage late in the opening period.

Duke extended its lead to as many as three goals on four occasions but could never pull away from the Nittany Lions. Following Leadmon’s goal at 2:28 in the first quarter for the 5-4 lead, the Blue Devils led for the next 37:53.

Dyson Williams capped a 4-0 spurt to start the second quarter with a rebound goal, extending Duke’s lead to 7-4.

Penn State ended its 10-minute scoring drought with a pair of goals in 43 seconds to make it a one-goal game again with 9:05 left in the second period.

Duke hit back with two of the final three goals to take a 9-7 lead into the locker room. The first half featured three ties and two lead changes.

Duke extended the lead back to three twice in the early minutes of the third quarter with goals from Charles Balsamo and Tommy Schelling, but Penn State refused to go away scoring a pair 54 seconds apart to make it a one-goal game again, 11-10, with 7:43 left in the third stanza.

The trend continued and Penn State completed the rally with a goal from Jake Morin to tie the game 13-13 – the first tie since 2:28 in the first quarter. TJ Malone put the Nittany Lions on his back in the second half, with four goals and two assists in 30 minutes. Malone finished with six goals and two assists for eight points.

Graduate student Jadon Kerry scored the second goal of his season to give Duke the lead again and the teams traded goals over the next three minutes to leave the game even at 15-15. Unable to hit the cage on a couple of possessions, Duke held off Penn State for a 30-second penalty, forcing the Nittany Lions into a shot clock violation.

Leadmon sent the final shot in regulation wide of the goal, setting up the Annapolis, Md., native for the winner in overtime.

Duke won the ground ball battle, 33-32, and forced 17 Nittany Lion turnovers. Penn State goaltender Jack Fracyon made 12 saves in the setback.

Blue Devil goalie William Helm had six saves but did not make a save in the final 27 minutes of the contest. Penn State scored three goals on just four shots in the fourth quarter, before the Blue Devils held the Nittany Lions without a shot on the extra-man opportunity.

Notes

Duke moves to 43-21 all-time in NCAA Tournament games and advances to its seventh NCAA title game. The Blue Devils are 7-7 overall in semifinal outings, 12-8 in NCAA Tournament games decided by a goal and 5-1 in overtime contests.

Head coach John Danowski moves to 38-19 in NCAA Tournament games and 34-11 at Duke.

Duke trailed for just 63 seconds in the game, 3-2 and 4-3, in the first quarter. The Blue Devils led for 45:10 of the 61:05.

Dyson Williams notched two goals to move to seventh on the Duke single-season chart with 59 career goals. He is one goal away from becoming the fifth different Blue Devil to score 60 goals in a season, joining Max Quinzani, Justin Guterding, Zack Greer and Jordan Wolf.

Brennan O’Neill finished his afternoon with four points to move to sixth on the single-season points list with 95 points. He is five shy of becoming the third Blue Devil in program history to record 100 points in a season. Guterding (113) and Wolf (103) are the other two.

Wilson Stephenson recorded three caused turnovers to move into a tie for third place on the Duke single-season chart with 28 on the year.

Jake Naso went 22-of-34 at the faceoff dot, bringing his career victory number to 773. He ranks 20th in NCAA history in faceoff wins and is 43 off the Duke record of 816.

Penn State’s .517 shooting percentage was the highest Duke has allowed an opponent to shoot all season.

Quotes

John Danowski Opening Statement

First I want to congratulate Penn State, their players, Coach Tambroni, Coach Haus, the staff. They were just terrific. I can't imagine the hurt that they're feeling right now relative to our exhilaration. I really respect Coach and what he does, and they were just terrific today.

With that being said, while you look at the game from both ways, both sides, I don't know if it was our best game defensively or that Penn State just played lights out. I'd have to watch the film to see that. Offensively we did enough. I thought we left a couple of opportunities on the field, but we did enough to be successful, and very proud of this group for playing in a very difficult atmosphere, very pro Penn State, and for figuring it out at the end.

Q. Garrett, close call there. Did you have a sense of where you were relative to the crease on that play? Kind of go through what you were seeing on that and obviously at the end of regulation, too.

GARRETT LEADMON: Yeah, it's something that we practice every day. Even the midfielders behind the cage was getting up to five and five, sitting there, absorbing that contact, and I knew that if I was able to just get like a good change of direction that I'd be able to get underneath, just put my foot in the ground and just go for it, dive in front of the cage and try to throw a fair play up, and that's what I did.

Any adjustments that you made at halftime? It seemed like you really wore down their guys. Any adjustments you made, and what did it feel like to put two goals away on such a big stage?

JAKE NASO: Yeah, definitely took me a little while to get used to what was going on out there, but I think the face-off unit collectively as a group, being myself and then the wing guys, really came together. We looked at the iPad what we were doing wrong in the first, second quarter, and just to work on that and focus on what we can do better, and I think the face-off unit as a whole turned it around in the second half, which led to some success on offense.

Up Next

Duke will face the winner between Notre Dame and Virginia in the title game, Monday, May 29 at 1 p.m., on ESPN.