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Letter from the editor

Could this year have been any crazier? Duke captured ACC Championships, reached Elite Eights and stole last-second wins — reminding us all of what makes college athletics so special.

This is our third Year in Review Edition, a chance to revisit special seasons and highlight our writers’ tremendous work. The sports department did a fantastic job in Vol. 121, and I can’t wait for you to read their coverage from the past year. I want to thank our former sports editor, Abby DiSalvo, and the former uppermast team of Elle Chavis, Martin Heintzelman and Caleb Dudley for leading our department with kindness and of course, great writing.

I also want to thank the incoming sports managing editors, Ryan Hamner and Colton Schwabe, for their support throughout the early days of this new volume and our year on lowermast. Nothing is possible without the team I have alongside me.

I believe you’d be hard-pressed to find another institution with a sports experience that matches Duke’s. From the ACC Football Championship to every game in Cameron Indoor Stadium's Section 17, the student body showed its spirit and witnessed incredible moments along the way. Plenty of heartbreak did arrive via unexpected departures or shocking buzzer-beaters, but Blue Devil fans never wavered.

I am so honored to lead an incredible paper in such an important time for collegiate athletics, and I can’t wait to see what this year brings.

And to help make this department the very best it can be, I gladly welcome the input of the student body and our readers. If you have any coverage ideas or story tips, please feel free to reach out: My inbox (ajm201@duke.edu) is always open.

Thank you!

Vol.122 Sports Masthead

Editor: Alex Min

Managing Editors: Colton Schwabe, Ryan Hamner

Blog Editor: Ella Bilu

Assistant Blog Editors: Brady Cross, Lucie Ansell, Spencer Oshins

Photo Editors: Alex Long, Wanyu Zhang

ENJOY

FALL

The fall season started one of the most action-filled years in recent Duke athletics memory with a bang. Duke football authored one of its best seasons in program history powered by a high-flying offense that helped the Blue Devils sweep the Triangle and sneak into the ACC Championship game. A 27-20 overtime victory over No. 16 Virginia marked Duke’s first outright conference title since 1962, and the campaign was capped off by a 42-39 win over Arizona State in the Sun Bowl.

Women’s soccer didn’t skip a beat in Kieran Hall’s first year at the helm, with a 17-5-1 record and ACC semifinal berth. Behind Mia Minestrella and Kat Rader, Duke cruised through the NCAA Tournament to a second-straight College Cup appearance, where it fell to No. 1 Stanford. An upset of No. 3 Princeton in the NCAA Tournament was the highlight of men’s soccer's season, as the Blue Devils put together a lackluster 8-2-6 regular season and bowed out of the ACC Tournament early.

Volleyball struggled with a 5-26 record, as legendary 27-year head coach Jolene Nagle retired following the season’s conclusion. Former American head coach Ahen Kim was tapped as her successor. Despite spending much of the season in the nation's top ten, field hockey was unable to break through against North Carolina in both the ACC and NCAA Tournaments. Now-graduate student Alaina McVeigh was named to the U.S. Women’s National Team.

Cross country saw improvement, with the women's team placing sixth and the men’s ninth in the NCAA Southeast Regional. Stephanie Moss earned an NCAA Championship bid where she ended her career with a 54th place finish.

MEN'S SOCCER

Duke men's soccer stuns No. 3 Princeton 2-1, advances to NCAA Tournament third round

By Ved Shenoy Staff Writer

Nov. 24, 2025

PRINCETON, N.J.— A favored opponent is tough to beat. An opponent that has nothing to lose is tougher.

With just under 20 minutes to play in the contest and trailing 1-0, a nimble feed from the trusted cleat of Blue Devil striker Ulfur Bjornsson threaded the needle through the final lines of the Princeton defense — the pressure was now on senior midfielder Kenan Hot to finish the job. On the heels of generating minimal offensive spark in the first 70 minutes of the game, the Duke fans sprinkled through the sea of orange and black in Roberts Stadium held their breath in a moment of unfiltered angst.

But here — in this moment and in his home state — the Lincroft, New Jersey, native would make no mistake.

Goalkeeper Andrew Samuels slid into the turf, extending his right leg in a last-ditch effort to preserve the one-goal lead the Tigers had warily protected since the 33-minute mark. A small loft was all Hot needed to stretch the ball beyond Samuels’ reach, and it cruised into the back of the net.

With the goal, Hot granted his team something more than an equalizer. He gifted them something they had been searching for the entire contest — rhythm.

In a stunning turn of the tides, a visiting Duke team delivered a shocking 2-1 upset over

third-seeded Princeton in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Amidst the bitter chill of a late-November evening in New Jersey and vehement gibes from the Tigers’ hometown crowd, it was the Blue Devils who found a way to do the unthinkable.

Aggression was the name of the game for Princeton Sunday — a theme that dictated its successes as well as its eventual demise.

Capitalizing on an ugly first half by Duke, the Tigers controlled the ball in opponent territory for the majority of the first period. As if every possession rivaled the contest as a whole in terms of stakes, the hometown team would stop at nothing to establish control of the game’s narrative on both sides of the ball.

early on. We just had to make sure we stayed in the game; waited for it to settle,” senior defender Kamran Acito said after the game.

cutting off passing lanes, disrupting almost any forward progress by the visitors and maintaining possession in enemy territory for the majority of the first half, aggression also translated into fouls. By the final whistle, the hosts had accumulated 26 of them to Duke’s 12.

a gridlock for the first half hour until a great look by forward Daniel Ittycheria

ricocheted off the top post and set up a corner kick for Princeton. This time around, the ball sailed over the back shoulder of Duke goalkeeper Eryk Dymora, who lost his footing and watched Princeton midfielder Jack Hunt deliver the header that opened up the scoring column.

The sun set as both teams headed to their locker rooms; for Duke, the lights got brighter and the challenge grew greater. Despite the scarcity of momentum heading into the locker room, head coach John Kerr had formulated a

matter what’s happening, one goal will change the way both teams play,” Hot said.

No more than 15 seconds after Duke leveled the score, a red card was given to Princeton’s Ittycheria for a boot to the body of Dymora. A revitalized Blue Devil team also found itself more assertive in its ball control and presence in enemy territory.

The shift in momentum was palpable. And with 4:15 left to play, the game finally turned on its head.

A brief back-and-forth between Jamie Kabuusu and Alessandro Arlotti allowed Duke to pierce through Princeton’s defensive tandem of Jack Jasinski and Bardia Hormozi. Poised along the endline, a cross from Kabuusu collided with a flurry of blue and white near the goal before conveniently dropping to the feet of midfielder Leonardo D’Ambrosio. With a quick tap-in over the outstretched hands of Samuels, the storybook comeback was officially written into the history books.

“It’s never a panic with us … we knew we were gonna get one,” Hot said. “We all knew the second one was coming. Just a matter of when,

Steadfast in their resistance to any lastminute efforts by the Tigers, the Blue Devils held on to advance to the third round of the NCAA Tournament. Princeton fans began their prompt and hushed exit of the stadium as the Duke faithful turned the stadium into an echo chamber of their jubilant celebrations.

Duke women's soccer found its next leader from within

By Lucy Glynn Staff Writer

Nov. 30, 2025

For practice on Halloween, Duke women’s soccer players dressed up as Kieran Hall.

They tucked their long hair beneath hats with “HEAD COACH” scrawled across the front. Penciled scruff on their faces, zipped up in their gameday tracksuits. And on every chest, a printout photo of a beaver — the coach’s assigned animal from a personality test — emblazoned the Blue Devils who walked out clutching Gatorade cups.

Even in his inaugural year, the team took to Hall quickly. After six years on the women’s staff — and nearly a decade at Duke — Hall stepped into former head coach Robbie Church’s 24-season legacy, already fluent in the familydriven culture that defines the program. The handoff reflected a succession Church had long envisioned, ushering Duke into a new phase led by Hall.

The steal

Before Hall even considered women’s soccer, Church already had his eyes locked on him.

“As a coach, you always have a list of people — you never know what’s going to happen,” Church said.

Hall was at the top of his list.

Their first meeting was in the summer of 2016. The men’s and women’s staff had been displaced from their regular offices as the former Murray Building transformed into what is now Scott Family Athletics Performance

Center. In tight, close quarters in the Kennedy Tower, an English newcomer on the Duke men’s soccer staff made his first introduction to the women’s head coach.

Hall had just recently landed in Durham with his wife, who was starting medical school at Duke. Coming off his post as Denver’s director of men’s soccer operations and eager for his next gig, he knocked on men’s head coach John Kerr’s door and walked out with a volunteer assistant coach position.

The roots of his passion for the sport stretch far back — and overseas — to Blackburn, England, where a young Hall absorbed a love for football.

"I just fell into it organically,” Hall said. “Growing up in England, especially like me,

coming up with a sort of humble upbringing, it was the only sport for us to play — street soccer.”

He carried the fervor across the Atlantic to Fort Louis College in Durango, Colorado, where he helped the Skyhawks clinch a 2005 NCAA Division II championship and finish runner-up the following year. After graduating, Hall earned selections to the Great Britain U-23 squad for the 2007 and 2009 World University Games, and in 2008 was drafted by Major League Soccer to the Houston Dynamo.

Coaching, though, was never the plan.

“Right out of college, I wanted to do something completely different,” Hall said. “So I worked in marketing and branding, and that's sort of what I felt like was my career path … but then it became really apparent that I was useless

at everything else, so I may as well just try to do something in soccer.”

It was the next best thing for the former athlete, and Hall redirected his competitive instincts into mastering the coaching craft.

“Coaches just have FOMO [fear of missing out]. You can't quite let go of the sport,” Hall said. “The next best thing is try to hang out with people that still play and try to influence them in the best way possible.”

Hall’s influence and work ethic were unmistakable to Church. An outside-of-the-box thinker with an uncommon command of the game, Hall carried a player’s drive to improve with a full understanding of what Duke was about: a blend of athletics and academics rooted in tradition.

“He loved being at Duke. He wanted to be at Duke. He didn't want to jump around. He didn't just want a head coaching job," Church said. “Duke stood for everything that he stood for.”

So when Erwin van Bennekom left the Duke women’s soccer associate head coach position for an Indiana head coaching job at the end of 2018, Church and Carla Overbeck — the former US women’s national team captain who has spent over 30 years with the Blue Devil program — knew exactly where to turn.

“We were both like, ‘We want to steal. We want to steal Kieran from the men's side,’” Church said. “I always had in the back of [my] mind, if Erwin would take a head coaching job, then the first person I wanted to reach out to was Kieran.”

The assistant position offer didn’t draw an immediate “yes” from Hall. He’d coached across

WOMEN'S SOCCER

leagues, countries and languages, but the shift from men to women was a transition to which he gave deliberate thought. Church and Overbeck remained persistent in their persuasions.

Eventually, Hall’s hesitation gave way.

“I realized if I’m going to hang my hat on a program and really invest in a good project — something that really aligns with what I'm about — then Robbie and Carla were fantastic,” Hall said. “It was a no-brainer from that point.”

Building from within

Stealing Hall over to the women’s side wasn’t where Church’s ambition ended. In Hall, he saw a coach who could anchor the Duke women’s soccer legacy. Church knew he would be ready to retire soon, so he kept his eye on Hall as his possible replacement.

“Let's see how it works out the first couple of years,” Church remembered thinking. “And see if this is somebody that we'd like to continue.’”

Across the six seasons between Hall’s hire and Church’s retirement, the former head coach grew increasingly confident in his younger counterpart. Skilled at spotting details overlooked by other coaches — backed by a master’s in football management from Universidad Europea de Madrid — Hall took the lead in on-field instruction.

But what made him stand out in a women’s soccer role was how he curated his relationships. In Church's words, “communication, and maybe individual communication,” is slightly more frequent “on the women’s side than the men’s side.”

“Kieran had the personality to really communicate and connect with the women," the former coach said.

“He just cares so much about not only seeing what you do on the field and caring about your performance, but creating that relationship with you as a whole person,” redshirt junior Taylor Evans said.

After a single season, Hall was promoted to associate head coach in June 2020. Sliding to a new seat on the bench, he and Church synced. From team identity and lineups — with the occasional disagreement over the 11th player — their visions for Duke women’s soccer converged. And as Church grumbled about his Barcelona team, and Hall about the struggling Manchester United squad, they orchestrated three consecutive NCAA quarterfinal appearances for their own program.

“Robbie was unbelievable. His mentorship is incredible, and how he went about it was just empowerment,” Hall said. “He just would say ‘You're ready for this now,’ and he would just sort of leave it to me to figure out and guide me when needed.”

When Church finally decided it was time to step down, the coach he had hunted from within Kennedy Tower became the successor he’d envisioned.

Much like when Mike Krzyzewski passed his storied team to Jon Scheyer, Church identified the Blue Devils’ next leader as the guy sitting next to him on the bench. On July 22, 2024, Duke Athletics announced Hall as the third head coach of the women’s soccer program.

The Hall era

With Church’s departure in December, Hall became head of the Duke soccer family.

“I was like, ‘Wow, okay. Robbie was here in the fall, and now he’s not,’ but at the same time his spirit and what he left here was still there,” Evans said. "Our team culture always has the same

foundation … We all love each other, we're all family, and that's a big thing that Robbie was a part of. And I think Kieran knew that that was something that he needed to encompass.”

Family has always been the centerpiece of Hall’s life. He comes from a large one himself, and the team quickly became an extension. Running a Division I soccer program demands that you spend as much, if not more, time with the program as with your loved ones. Conveniently, the two intertwine.

Dr. Emily Barney Hall, Hall’s wife, is an anesthesiologist at Duke Hospital who has worked on some of the cases for the team’s injured players. She and her husband also recently hosted a team dinner at their home, complete with food trucks and table tennis.

“For him to be able to show that he wants to create such a deep relationship with all of us, he's gonna open us up to his home, I think, is something super important that I've noticed in the transition,” Evans said.

Honoring Church’s legacy also means pushing forward on the field.

“I think if I was to tell Robbie that we're just continuing to do what we've always done, he would be really disappointed in me,” Hall said.

The young coach defines his athletes to be “hunters” — never-satisfied, process-driven women on the field and in the classroom. His vision is ambitious: building Duke women’s soccer into not only the premier college destination but also a springboard into the professional world.

"When we break down film, when we set up practice, when we go out to training, when we're in the weight room, everything is super deliberate and very well thought-out,” junior Mia Oliaro said. "He'll stay up ‘til crazy hours of the night, rewatching film back, thinking about what he could have done differently, what we could have done differently.”

“I mean, honestly, I wonder how much this man sleeps,” Evans said.

This season, the Blue Devils are once again among the nation’s top teams, grinding through Hall’s first NCAA Tournament appearance as head coach. After a strong 12-3-1 regular season and a gut-punch of an ACC semifinal loss to Notre Dame, Duke has responded with four straight shutouts to surge into the College Cup.

“It's important to have a program that just represents the essence of what college sports is about,” Hall said. “A normal group of young women doing extraordinary things.”

To the program’s former architect, those extraordinary things feel inevitable.

“There's no question in my mind that Kieran Hall will win a national championship at Duke with women's soccer,” Church said. “He'll win their first one."

The fake scruff has long been wiped away off players’ faces, and the beaver printouts have been swapped for jersey numbers. But Hall’s impersonators are still following his lead.

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KING OF THE CHAOS

Duke football upsets No. 16 Virginia in overtime to capture first ACC Championship title

By Abby DiSalvo Managing Editor

Dec. 7,

2025

CHARLOTTE— The Blue Devils left the Queen City newly crowned. After advancing to the ACC Championship game by way of a five-team tiebreaker, unranked Duke upset No. 16 Virginia to secure the program’s first outright conference title since 1962. The Blue Devils went 4-for-4 in the red zone and 3-for-3 on fourth down to clinch the 27-20 victory.

“We've gone through a lot of adversity this year, maybe more so than any other team in the country,” head coach Manny Diaz said. “I think that has a lot to do with why we were able to overcome the adversity of the last two minutes of regulation tonight. We said we were gonna win the game on the last play of the game, and we did it in a very, very Duke fashion.”

When the two teams entered the first overtime in the championship game's history, freshman running back Nate Sheppard immediately took the ball 23 yards on three consecutive carries. Two touches from Anderson Castle came up empty, as did an attempted pass to wideout Cooper Barkate. A fourth-down reception by tight end Jeremiah Hasley — along with a roughing-the-passer penalty on the Cavaliers — finally turned in the points Duke needed and backed Virginia up to the 40yard line.

The Cavaliers took the ball in an attempt to match the score, but linebacker Luke Mergott intercepted a trick-play pass thrown by quarterback Chandler Morris to squelch any momentum Virginia had left. The Blue Devils streamed onto the field in a sea of white-and-blue celebration, having defied the odds and snapped Duke’s 10-game losing streak to ranked opponents.

“There's no better feeling,” quar terback Darian Mensah said. “To bring a championship to a school that was primarily known for basketball on the football field, I think that's a statement that me and the seniors on this team re ally have tried to make.”

Virginia emerged from the halftime break trailing by seven and lit a fire in the crisp Decem ber air. Morris found Cam Ross with a 29-yard rocket after to taling just 37 yards in the en tire first half, and J’Mari Tay lor rushed the ball deep into Duke territory.

The Blue Devils, however, held tight to their fledgeling lead. After putting together

a critical stop to bring up third down at the 5-yard line, Ma’khi Jones pressured Morris out of the pocket and DaShawn Stone deflected his attempted touchdown pass. Virginia kicked a field goal to set the score at 14-10.

Duke stormed back onto the field, intent on widening the deficit with 7:19 to play in the third quarter. Sheppard picked up 12 yards on the ground, and Barkate reeled in a 38-yard reception to put him over 1,000 yards on the season. A facemask penalty on the Cavaliers brought the Blue Devils within 15 yards of the end zone, but a false start on fourth-and-2 forced a field goal instead of a touchdown.

sions and one successful fourth-down play, foreshadowing a long night of gritty gains.

That initial Blue Devil progress almost puttered out when a smattering of penalties set up fourth-and-2 on the Cavaliers’ 41-yard line. Mensah, who had not yet thrown for more than nine yards, finally delivered a 16-yard dart to Landen King to move the chains. Six snaps later, Hasley took a 12-yard pass to paydirt for Duke’s first touchdown of the night.

The Cavaliers responded with frantic energy. Morris sent a deep pass up the middle on his first snap, but Mergott managed to force a fumble on the next. It just so happened that officials caught Chandler Rivers for illegal hands-to-the-face, negating the recovery by Jaiden Francois. The Blue Devils made up for the error with a clutch third-down sack, forcing a field-goal attempt that Will Bettridge missed wide left. With 1:31 to play in the first quarter, Diaz’s squad clung to its 7-0 lead.

It wouldn’t last long. Virginia’s Corey Costner intercepted a pass intended for Barkate, gifting the Cavaliers possession on Duke’s 23-yard line. To the thrill of the orange-clad fans, Morris connected with Jahmal Edrine for another nine yards. A false start pushed the regular-season champions backwards as the first quarter expired, but Taylor soon ran in a touchdown to knot the score at 7-7.

"We knew that Virginia was a great team ... so why not go full face into adversity?"

DARIAN

Virginia attempted to patch the 17-10 wound, but Duke once again pulled off a fourth-down stop near painted grass. This time, Stone deflected a pass in the end zone to leave the Cavaliers empty-handed after a nine-play, 3:53 sprint. The Blue Devils came up equally short when they retook the ball, and it remained a one-score game with 8:46 left to play.

When Duke safety Caleb Weaver intercepted a Virginia pass, the Blue Devils took over at the Cavaliers’ 33-yard line to deafening roars. Mensah — the conference leader in passing yards and passing touchdowns — launched a 30-yard dagger to Barkate. Todd Pelino’s field goal brought the score to 20-10.

Virginia tacked on a field goal and mounted an impressive drive in the game’s waning minutes, which saw Weaver go down with an injury. Ultimately, the Cavaliers advanced to a fourth-and-4 at Duke’s 27-yard line, and Morris found Eli Wood for an 18-yard touchdown that leveled the score to send the game to overtime.

“Those are the moments I live for,” Mensah said. “We knew this game was going to come down to the last play, and we knew it was gonna go to overtime. We knew that Virginia was a great team ... so why not go full face into adversity?”

Duke wrote itself into the record books right off the bat, assembling the lengthiest drive in ACC Championship history on its opening possession. The 16-play, 9:38-minute attack involved three third-down conver -

On Duke’s next drive, touches from Sheppard and Castle failed to create forward progress. The Blue Devils turned to their arsenal of special-teams chaos, securing a first down with a fake punt that Kevin O'Connor ran six yards up the middle. After suffering a 9-yard sack, an increasingly desperate Mensah sent a rocket down the left side of the field to a waiting Sahmir Hagans. The graduate wideout reeled in the catch for a 35-yard gain, and Sheppard took it 16 yards for Duke’s second touchdown of the night. With Pelino’s extra point, the Blue Devils led 14-7 heading into the break.

“As a program, we try to pride ourselves on being comfortable in the uncomfortable moments,” defensive end Wesley Williams said. “Coach Diaz says it all the time: ‘The ACC Championship, you win it every day. They just hand you a trophy today.’ So that's kind of how we live.”

'Dare to do bigger things': After capping historic season with Sun Bowl win, Duke football looks forward

By Abby DiSalvo Managing Editor

Jan. 1, 2026

EL PASO, Texas— Quarterback Darian Mensah hoisted a trophy in the air, and a shower of Frosted Flakes rained over head coach Manny Diaz. As the sun sank below the mountains that cradled the Sun Bowl Stadium, Duke celebrated the twilight of a tumultuous, heartwarming, improbably-successful football season.

Twelve months earlier, the concept of ringing the Victory Bell, earning a pig-shaped state trophy, winning ACC Championship hardware and capping the season off with a bowl victory might have seemed absurd. But by the end of 2025, the Blue Devil squad celebrating in Texas had etched itself in the record books a dozen times over, persevering through five painful losses to grab every accolade still within its reach.

“I think our players know that we could have done more than even what we did this year. We own the mistakes we made. We were grateful that we were to still play the ACC Championship and win it. We're grateful that we're able to come to the Sun Bowl and win that, but when we go back to Durham, we're not gonna be sitting around saying, ‘Wow. We did it all right,’” Diaz said after the final victory. “We know there's more there to be had, and internally, our expectations are extraordinarily high.”

In many ways, the Sun Bowl represented all that this Duke football team has come to embody. Mensah, a transfer from Tulane, showed off the tried-and-true connections he spent a year

developing. A first-quarter touchdown pass to Cooper Barkate helped push the Harvard transfer further over 1,000 yards on the season. Redshirt sophomore Que’Sean Brown exploded for 10 receptions, two touchdowns and a career-high 178 yards.

And though it wasn't all sunshine through their final contest, the Blue Devils had learned to weather storms over the course of a cloudy season. After Mensah failed to convert a fourthand-goal situation in the fourth quarter — with his team down by four points and roughly three minutes to play — he had no trouble admitting that things looked bleak.

“I was pretty defeated after that fourth down,” he said. “My teammates did an exceptional job just lifting me up, because I did feel like that game was out of reach, to be honest.”

Then Kendall Johnson forced a fumble, and Ma’khi Jones handed the ball back to his Blue Devil teammates. Duke immediately erased the past few minutes from its memory. Brown caught the key touchdown pass to give the Blue Devils the lead they were looking for, and Diaz’s squad hung on for dear life.

“It was like a roller coaster, you know, coming off that last drive,” Brown said. “I looked at Darian and I saw one-on-one to the field. We do that the first day of practice as well, one-onone tackle. And I know if it's me and somebody in front of me, nobody’s stopping me from getting into the end zone.”

The game’s seismic momentum shift — which Brown celebrated with a backwards leap into a giant inflatable bowl of Frosted Flakes

— unfolded in similar fashion to Duke’s late defeat of Clemson, last-minute win against North Carolina and clinch of a conference championship berth. The Blue Devils got a little creative and a little lucky. Then they coasted the rest of the way on equal parts talent and confidence.

And much like it did across season at large, Duke’s defense overcame struggles to help write the season’s happy epilogue. After allowing 348 yards in the first half — and battling the notable absence of Vincent Anthony Jr. and Chandler Rivers — Jonathan Patke’s unit righted the ship in the second. The Blue Devils forced a fumble and a key stop in each of the final two quarters before Luke Mergott sealed his team’s win with an interception for the second game in a row. The ending was poignant; once again, the Duke redshirt sophomore linebacker proved his leadership in a room devastated by earlyseason injuries.

Diaz urged his team to celebrate and then reflect.

“We don't want this to be the high water mark for the program,” Diaz said. “We're proud of those guys for how they found it to how they left it, but now the responsibility is to continue to advance and even dare to do bigger things.”

Duke put together a laundry list of accomplishments to cap the 2025 season. The Blue Devils combined with Arizona State for the most offense ever in the contest. Running back Nate Sheppard set new program

benchmarks for freshman rushing yards and touchdowns. The team recorded its second consecutive nine-win season for just the second time in program history.

But as Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham said after the game, “When you climb, it's not just a rocket ship to the moon.” Duke had experienced the ups and downs of growth more acutely than most teams. It nearly saw its hopes crushed in Week 2 against Illinois, Week 3 against Tulane, Week 8 against Georgia Tech, Week 11 against UConn and Week 12 against Virginia. Diaz’s squad didn’t capture a win against a ranked opponent until the ACC Championship, and it only earned that chance because Cal upset SMU in a late-night thriller. The Blue Devils even trailed the Sun Devils for a majority of their bowl game’s fourth quarter.

Somehow, Duke’s rocket ship still landed among stars. The team never declared a failure.

With a record-breaking Sun Bowl victory, a historic conference championship, another nine-win campaign and intoxicating confidence, the Blue Devils proved that they will continue pushing the limits of this program’s capacity for success.

The winter season crowned three ACC Champion squads for the Blue Devils and plenty of theatrics throughout postseason play. The men’s basketball team brought in another talented recruiting class, headlined by eventual Wooden Award winner Cameron Boozer. The team capped off a historic 35-3 record across the season, including a single ACC loss and the ACC Tournament title, before UConn overtook head coach Jon Scheyer’s team in the Elite Eight with an unforgettable Braylon Mullins dagger with a fraction of a second left on the clock.

On the women’s side, head coach Kara Lawson’s team reached new heights, recording a 17-game win streak spanning from December to February and edging out Louisville with an overtime victory to earn its second straight ACC title. In the NCAA Tournament, an Ashlon Jackson 3-point buzzer-beater sent The Sisterhood past No. 2-seed LSU and into the Elite Eight where it eventually fell to top-seeded UCLA.

The fencing team continued conference success as the men claimed the ACC title and women finished in second. At the ACC Track and Field Indoor Championships, then-

WINTER

sophomores Braelyn Baker and Maya Collins, alongside then-seniors Julia Jackson and Lauren Tolbert improved its 4x400m relay meet record to help fuel the women’s team’s runner-up finish.

Wrestling’s Connor Barket qualified for the NCAA Tournament even with the Blue Devils falling in the first round of the national tournament but earning a win in the consolation bracket. Swim and dive sent five swimmers and one diver to the NCAA Championships, with Kaelyn Gridly and Tatum Wall securing All-America honors.

DOGFIGHT

No. 2-seed UConn upsets No. 1-seed Duke with buzzer-beater in East Regional Final

By Alex Min Sports Editor

March 29, 2026

WASHINGTON— The East Regional Final came exactly as promised: A battle of superb talent and elite coaching down to the final buzzer.

Despite holding a substantial lead through most of the game, the Blue Devils bowed out of the NCAA Tournament in the Elite Eight to a UConn buzzer-beater. The Boozer brothers’ combined 42 points weren’t enough in the 73-72 loss that stunned the Capital One Arena crowd. Dan Hurley and the Huskies have earned their third trip to the Final Four in four years.

“I could not be more disappointed and feeling for our guys, at the same time of just trying to process what happened. I don't have the words,” head coach Jon Scheyer said. “I'm incredibly sorry for these guys that they've got to go through this. This is on us. We're going to be in this together.”

Early on, it seemed that UConn wouldn’t get anywhere with an icy 3-point attack. With seven minutes remaining in the game — and perhaps his team’s season, too — Silas Demary Jr. sought to change that. The guard drilled treys on consecutive possessions from each corner, the Huskies’ second and third 3-pointers of the evening. Amped up, the team from Storrs, Connecticut, whittled the lead all the way down to 67-64, the closest the score had stood since 9-6. A Solo Ball and-one triggered a media timeout — sending UConn players running onto the court and Hurley into hysterics.

Big-time players show up in big-time moments, and both Cameron Boozer and Alex Karaban rose to the challenge. Following a Duke timeout, Karaban calmly stepped into his sixth 3-point attempt of the contest, this time finding the bottom of the net at last. Only one point now stood between the teams.

The National Player of the Year favorite Boozer swung back, dislodging defenders for a shot at the cup. 72-69, Duke. But who can ever predict what happens in March?

Demary split a trip to the line to bring the score to 72-70 with 10 seconds remaining. On the ensuing inbound, the Huskies denied every Blue Devil attempt to get open. Cayden

Boozer finally ended up with the ball, but his next pass was deflected by Demary at midcourt. Mullins secured the loose ball and swung it to Karaban. The forward fired it right back to Mullins, who, like Karaban moments before, hadn’t recorded a 3-pointer all night. The freshman, collected, rose up from way beyond the arc and broke the hearts of Duke fans everywhere as his triple was pure.

“It's easy to look at that play — I look at every play that happened, especially in that second half. This is not about one play,” Scheyer said. “It's about every play that put us in that position, and that's what you don't want to do, where one play, something could happen.”

There’s the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and the Huskies took it to heart Sunday. UConn had brutalized Michigan State with its size and physicality in the Sweet 16, and the No. 2 seed tried the same against Duke. On the contest’s opening possession, 6-foot-11 Tarris Reed Jr. received the ball in the post, jostling Maliq Brown out of position to draw a quick shooting foul. The former Michigan Wolverine was an early matchup nightmare for the Blue Devils with his mix of length and touch around the rim — scoring 10 of his team’s first 16 points.

But Duke met force with force. While Reed gave defenders fits, Cameron Boozer was as good of a response as any. After receiving an entry pass with no defender between him and the basket, Boozer went up for the layup only to be denied by Karaban. The superstar freshman didn’t give up on the play, however, saving the ball on the baseline and finding Dame Sarr in the left corner. Sarr launched a triple without hesitation, his shot rattling around the rim before finally falling.

The very next possession, Boozer again secured the ball in the paint — this time giving Karaban no chance to make a play. Although the Miami native wasn’t impervious to the Huskies’ claws, he manipulated the opposing defense effectively. Following the under-16 media timeout, the Boozer twins came alive from deep, with each brother drilling a trey on the left wing.

All game long, Cameron Boozer acted as a magnet to defenders whenever he stepped inside the arc. When a pair of Huskies swarmed the forward in the post, Boozer flung a crosscourt dime to a wide-open Sarr in the right corner. Sarr sank his second triple of the contest, and as he skipped back on defense, it was his turn to electrify the crowd. Seconds later, Boozer’s emphatic denial of Reed was the sequence’s exclamation point — sending the sea of royal blue into a frenzy. Five Cameron Boozer free throws extended the lead to 40-21 and finished a 14-0 run.

Hurley’s squad had no immediate answer for the Blue Devils’ dialed-up intensity. As the No. 1 seed matched the Huskies’ paintedarea prowess, their efficiency cratered. Reed’s 5-for-7 start became 5-for-10 when the halftime buzzer sounded, and the team finished the opening period with a 1-for-11 mark from deep. Bruising offense could only guarantee UConn so many buckets: It needed to diversify its scoring approach. It needed more from its stars.

Mullins, while just a freshman in a veteran-heavy group, became the first Husky to snap out of his first-half slumber. After scoring two points across the first 20 minutes, Mullins knocked down near-identical midrange jumpers on back-to-back possessions — drawing an and-one opportunity on the second. UConn had drawn within 12, but it had a long way to go.

"We're going to be in this together."

JON

SCHEYER HEAD COACH

Cameron Boozer and Reed exchanged slams as the Elite Eight contest transformed into a slugfest. And finally, the sleeping giant of Karaban awoke. A savvy pass from Reed down low found the First Team All-Big East forward right at the rim, where he elevated to drop in his first points of the contest. The emergence of the Huskies’ second-leading scorer injected new life into the underdogs — energy that spiked with yet another Reed dunk to cut the deficit to seven.

A Demary two-pointer had brought UConn within five at 26-21, spurring Dan Hurley to pump up the Huskies’ faithful behind the bench. As a roar filled Capital One Arena, the Blue Devils maintained their composure. Cayden Boozer’s quick hands forced a turnover at midcourt, jumpstarting a transition opportunity that Nikolas Khamenia easily converted. And instead a run for UConn — as Hurley might’ve hoped — a Duke tsunami ensued.

“Honestly, this whole year has been a huge blessing,” Cameron Boozer said, one eye swollen from a hit he had taken during the game, both eyes red and puffy. “I mean, I came here, and I learned so much from our players — not just from the coaches, our whole players. We're just such a connected group. I love those guys ... I'm just proud of them, proud of our team.”

Scheyer and the Blue Devils will have to retool with a top recruiting class as several of Duke’s 2025-26 stars prepare for potential exits to the NBA draft.

SWEET REVENGE

Jackson's buzzer-beater sends No. 3-seed Duke past No. 2-seed LSU, into Elite Eight

By Martin Heintzelman Senior Editor March 27, 2026

SACREMENTO, Calif.— March Madness is, fundamentally, a month of storylines. There are rivalries rekindled, Cinderella runs and — as was the case in the Golden 1 Center — rematches of exciting regular-season games.

Sometimes in these second meetings, the first game’s loser returns with a vengeance: ready to get right and prove doubters wrong, moving on to the Elite Eight in the process.

Despite coming up against a legion of doom in the Tigers, the Blue Devils did exactly that. Duke won 87-85 to advance to the fourth round of the tournament — narrowly avoiding a late LSU comeback as Ashlon Jackson cashed a buzzer-beating three to give the squad from Durham the upset.

“I think basketball is just a game of runs,” Mair said. “We knew they were going to go on a run eventually throughout the game. The fact that they went on one in the fourth quarter, I mean, obviously it's not what we wanted. But it happened.”

Remarkably for a Duke team that has not been one of the better scoring squads in the country this season, the first quarter was a bit of a shootout. Fulwiley led the charge for the Tigers, scoring 10 points on perfect shooting from the field — including one early in the shot clock from well beyond the arc that closed the deficit to just three. Still, a paint jumper by Blue Devil guard Mair kept Duke in front 24-19 after 10 minutes of basketball.

The second quarter was another good one for Duke on offense. Forward Jordan Wood’s corner three clanged off the side of the backboard, but Thomas was there to grab the board and put the ball back in the net. A three from Mair gave the Blue Devils an 11-point lead. Now, the onus would be on Duke to hold on against an opponent more than capable of closing that gap. In fact, it seemed that Fulwiley alone would be capable of handling the issue — she was up to 16 points with 3:49 left in the half and the score tightened to just 38-32 in favor of the Blue Devils.

"It was fitting it came down to the last possession."

KARA

“I thought it was an incredible game. Both teams played so hard. It was fitting it came down to the last possession,” head coach Kara Lawson said postgame. “We had squandered away a little bit of a lead there late and luckily got another opportunity with 2.5 seconds left. And there was no doubt who I was going to in that situation.”

The fourth quarter was anyone’s game — but the Blue Devils seemed to have a much firmer grasp on it. Delaney Thomas managed to force a turnover, drawing an and-one against Flau’jae Johnson on the other end, and then it was Jackson’s turn to put on a show. She pulled up with a jumper at the end of the shot clock from around the free-throw line, drawing another foul and making the basket — turning to stare silently at the Duke fans in the stands. Toby Fournier brought her own fouldrawing abilities to the party on the next trip down the floor, also making the basket and the free throw. Duke jumped out to a 78-67 lead with 7:30 left in the game. Timeout, Tigers.

Now, the question remained: Could the Blue Devils survive? Taina Mair certainly thought so. After a flurry of scoring by both teams that moved the margin back to just seven, she pulled a three after getting MiLaysia Fulwiley to jump on a pump fake. Duke once again had a double-digit lead, this time with just 4:45 remaining. Still, LSU fought back.

A pair of Fulwiley free throws narrowed the margin to just five with a little over two minutes remaining. Then, a Tiger layup cut it to just three points. This time, it was Lawson who called timeout.

Delaney Thomas picked up an offensive foul to give the ball back to LSU, setting the Tigers up to tie the game. While they didn’t do that, they did cut the lead to just a point off a floater. Jackson had the chance to extend the lead to three after drawing a foul on Johnson, but she missed both at the charity stripe. A pair of LSU free throws at the other end gave the Tigers a one-point lead and Duke the ball with nine seconds remaining. Ultimately though, Jackson was ready when it counted most. She caught a ball off a baseline inbound, pump-faked to draw her defender past her, then nailed a shot from beyond the arc to win the game. Although the ball swirled around the rim for a moment, it slipped through the nylon to end the game. From the early moments of the contest, Jackson played with the sort of urgency one might expect from a player looking to extend her college career for at least one more game. The senior guard came out early, catching a pass from the interior and cashing her first 3-point attempt of the night.

LSU, on the other hand, was a little slow out the gate. When Blue Devil center Arianna Roberson grabbed a defensive rebound and quickly moved the ball up the floor to Fournier by way of guard Riley Nelson, Fournier made progress down low to score her third and fourth points of the game early. Down 9-2, Tiger head coach Kim Mulkey, clad in a typically flamboyant outfit, called a timeout. LSU was yet to score a field goal.

“I thought it was the way we started the game,” Mulkey said. “And we couldn't get three defensive stops in a row. We call that a kill. We had one kill all night. And [the Blue Devils] were able to get some second-chance points, even to the end. ... Just little things like that, we just couldn't get two possessions ahead. We were always catching up.”

Out of the break, the Tigers began to turn the ship around. Still without a made field goal, a wealth of opportunities at the line began to benefit the higher seed. Roberson made herself known with a pretty turnaround jumper, but LSU’s Avengers-esque roster began to show itself. A pair of acrobatic layups by guards Fulwiley and Grace Knox made it a 13-9 game heading into the first media timeout.

The two teams traded buckets for the rest of the period, alternating some impressive makes to keep the game close. A steal by Jackson set up an and-one to make the game 47-40 punctuated the half. Not only had Duke managed to score 47 points in 20 minutes against an opponent that was yet to give up that many in a half this season, but the Blue Devils were winning. It remained to be seen whether the underdogs could hold on when it really mattered, though.

Duke’s nerves showed early in the third quarter. Fournier got called for a travel on the first possession, while a pair of defensive lapses gave the Tigers four quick points. Mair got three back, but it was clear LSU had come out with a purpose: An and-one by Mikaylah Williams gave the Tigers their first lead in quite some time.

From that point, the two teams battled

‘A great thing’: Riley Nelson, Arianna Roberson and the patient growth of Duke women’s basketball

By Asa Ostrow Staff Writer

March 18, 2026

Duke guard Ashlon Jackson held the ball behind the baseline at the KFC Yum! Center with 6.6 seconds left on the clock. Peering into a cluster of teammates and defenders, she looked for the inbound that would secure one of the season’s most important victories for Duke women’s basketball. The score read "59 Duke, 57 Louisville," and the Cardinal faithful were at full attention for their team’s final chance to escape a major upset at home.

Minutes earlier, Jackson had delivered a crucial momentum bucket for Duke, draining a pull-up triple to secure a seven-point cushion after a tense back-and-forth stretch. Jackson, a senior, has been prolific for the Blue Devils on the scoreboards throughout her career — now sitting at third alone on Duke’s all-time 3-point field goals list.

On this inbound, Jackson’s pass slipped away from the hands of fellow senior Taina Mair, and Louisville forward Laura Ziegler quickly got ahold of the loose ball and lobbed it to a charging Imari Berry.

But there was Riley Nelson, immediately matching the fast break. Racing down the court, she stayed astride Berry and threw her arm in the way as the Louisville guard went up for the game-tying layup. It was a foul, but Duke couldn’t afford to give anything away. Berry made the first free throw, but her second caromed off the rim and towards a crop of

Class

players. Again, Nelson was there. Snatching a final rebound and wrapping the ball in a bear hug, she quashed any life the Cardinals had left. The 59-58 victory for the Blue Devils was their 14th straight, and defeating sixth-ranked Louisville on the road proved Duke had climbed the mountain to stay on top.

In the moment, this was just another clutch play from a team that performed in many a fourth quarter throughout its 17-game winning streak, and another time a young player rose to the occasion to keep that streak going. The story behind Nelson’s play, however, did not start with 6.6 seconds left at KFC Yum! Center Jan. 5. It started long before the season did, when a Maryland guard with an injured knee took a leap of faith.

Redshirt camaraderie

There was something more behind Nelson’s Duke debut in Paris last November than a routine summer transition to The Sisterhood. That debut had been a year in the making. After a season-ending January ACL tear during her freshman year with at Maryland, Nelson decided to transfer to Duke, where she would spend the 2024-25 campaign rehabilitating. According to Nelson, that hiatus in her college career was invaluable not only for her physical recovery but also as an on-ramp into a new program with new priorities.

“Coming into Duke, I knew obviously Duke defense was a big thing,” she said. “My dad told me that Coach Kara was recruiting [for it] in the portal: ‘Listen, they play defense over there.’

And I was coming off an injury, and so last year, I took the year to take the recovery, get myself involved in the program, just get acclimated at plays, my position coaches, all that stuff.”

The time off healed Nelson’s knee and turned her into a Blue Devil through-and-through. One especially meaningful part of cutting her teeth for the following season, though, was probably nowhere on a checklist. While going through the rehab process, Nelson befriended Arianna Roberson, a freshman in a similar spot.

Roberson was a highly-touted 5-star recruit, standing at an agile, poised 6-foot-4 and promising to play an indispensable role at Kara Lawson’s 5-spot sooner rather than later. But the June before arriving in Durham, Roberson had also torn her ACL while competing at the 2024 FIBA 3x3 U18 World Cup in Hungary. The knee injury took her out of commission for the entirety of her freshman season. In an unexpected silver lining, the center from San Antonio quickly found company in Durham while sitting out of the spotlight.

Reminiscing on the hours she and Roberson spent side-by-side at the grindstone during their redshirt year, Nelson smiled.

“Me and Ari, we spent the most time together last year. On the bench, in the weight room, just doing recovery, regular rehab stuff. Me and Ari, we were hand-in-hand in a lot of things,” she said.

For Roberson, taking on that tough time with Nelson also summoned positive memories. As a freshman both tackling the transition to college and recovering from a major injury,

of 2030, it’s time to start your

having Nelson as a sounding board could not have come at a better time.

“It was helpful, especially coming in and that happened to me as a freshman: I felt alone, and Riley was a couple of months ahead of me, so she was very inspirational,” Roberson said. “ … She knows exactly what I'm saying, even if I don't know how to say it, she knows how I felt in that moment. So it just is a reminder that I'm not crazy.”

Twists and turns

By Duke’s 83-32 beatdown of Norfolk State Nov. 12, the two were back in action. They tallied a matching 12 points that day, in Roberson’s first

See PROCESS on Page 18

journey to Duke!

The Academic Advising Center has provided the below roadmap for all incoming Trinity College Blue Devils…

WHAT TO DO AND EXPECT THIS SUMMER:

n Submit all your AP, IB and pre-matriculation credits to Duke. These can help with placement for fall courses.

n Complete your First-Year Questions in DukeHub.

n In mid-June, your Quad Advisor will reach out to you to schedule a virtual summer advising meeting to help you prepare for registration.

n July 29: Register for fall courses.

n July 30 – September 4: During the Drop/Add period, you can make changes to your schedule.

n August 15: We can’t wait to see you when you arrive on campus!

By Seyun Park and Morgan Kay Staff Writers

Feb. 23, 2026

For many, it would have been enough to beat the reigning national champion, Notre Dame. It would have been enough to beat an archrival, North Carolina. But that wasn’t enough for Duke.

An opening loss to a lower-ranked team, an afternoon upset of the No. 1 team in the nation and an emotionally-charged tiebreaker fence-off capped off the Blue Devil men’s fencing's run to a third conference title, the first for head coach Omar Elgeziry. Coming in as the second-to-last seed, no one expected this ending. The men finished 3-1 as they fenced their way to the top finish in Cameron Indoor Stadium, while the women's team finished 3-1 as runner-up to an undefeated Fighting Irish squad.

“I really don’t have words to say. I am very emotional … not only because we won [the] ACC, but we won [the] ACC in Cameron Indoor Stadium,” Elgeziry said.

Men's team bests Boston College in fenceoff for ACC title

In men’s individual fencing Saturday morning, Justin Glozman, Isaac Lief and Giulio Pech made it out of their respective pools into the quarterfinal round. All three lost in the first elimination round, including top-seeded Glozman, who narrowly dropped a 15-14 decision to the Tar Heels' Elden Wood.

To start the team campaign Sunday, Elgeziry’s squad suited up against Boston College. Little did

Duke know, this wouldn’t be the only time they faced the Eagles Sunday.

It was a rough start for the hosts. Failing to get much of anywhere in sabre and foil, the only strong performances came from the epee fencers: Ethan Boroditsky, Kyran Lin, Kozmo Rhyu and Peyton Young. While the team as a whole fell 1611 in this round, it wasn’t the end of the story. In fact, it was only the beginning.

“We have a chance to turn this around,” Elgeziry told his team after the initial loss. “And if we don’t, then we will … just have the privilege to compete in Cameron.”

Duke would go on to win its next two matches and, after a bye, go into round five against North Carolina with a 2-1 record. The team had already made it past Notre Dame, a

thrilling 14-13 upset. The Blue Devils knew beating North Carolina would at least secure a runner-up finish, but as time went on, their outlook began to change.

Partway through the match, Boston College and Notre Dame finished their bouts; the Fighting Irish had ruined the Eagles' perfect record. Now it wasn’t just a battle for second amongst the two rivals — it was a fight for a chance at the ACC title.

This shift was clear. The crowd could feel it too, getting noticeably louder. Whether it was the prospect of a championship or just the idea of beating North Carolina, fans in Cameron Indoor were excited. After an initial 5-0 lead, the Tar Heels began to catch up. By the time sabre and epee had finished their matches, it was 13-10 Duke.

With the Blue Devils’ fate hinging on foil, all eyes looked to Joseph Glasson as he faced off against the Tar Heels’ Peter Bruk. Tied 4-4, the Shanghai native could clinch the match with a win. Bruk advanced, pushing Glasson back. But as the Tar Heel lunged, the sophomore saw an opening, hitting his opponent to win the bout and the match.

With Duke and Boston College level at a 3-1 record, per the championship rules, the two teams proceeded to a tie-breaking fence-off. Duke put forward its best fencers in each of the events: Lev Ermakov for sabre, Boroditsky for epee and Abdelrahman Tolba for foil.

“I just reminded them … what we’ve done. We have been working hard. Our eyes [have] been on that championship from the beginning of the season,” Elgeziry said.

Tolba finished first, overcoming Boston College’s Yikai Lu and getting the Blue Devils one step closer to victory.

Only moments later, another match would end. Boroditsky had been going against Daniel Gao. At 4-4, the bout could have gone either way, but Duke wasn’t about to let this one get away. With a quick burst, the Summit, New Jersey, native would end the tournament.

His teammates were ready, immediately jumping in the air and swarming him in excitement. The crowd was on its feet, too.

Duke might have started as the fourth seed, but it finished number one.

SPRING

Spring brought classic underdog stories in droves. Women’s tennis had an impressive regular season, finishing 20-8 overall. The Blue Devils advanced to the semifinals of the conference tournament and earned a hosting spot in the NCAA Tournament, where they fell in the Round of 16 to Auburn. Then-sophomore Irina Balus finished the year ranked No. 9 in the country for singles. Men’s tennis couldn’t pick up many signature wins against a tough ACC schedule, but narrowly made the NCAA Team Championships and fell to No. 21 Southern California in the first round.

Women’s lacrosse tallied a 5-5 ACC record for an eighth-place finish and missed the NCAA Tournament with a 9-8 overall mark, although it stunned then-No. 9 Boston College in March. Rowing finished seventh at the ACC Championships with sixth-place finishes by two Varsity Eight boats. Baseball experienced growing pains in head coach Corey Muscara’s first season and ended with a 26-31 record. The Blue Devils finished last in the ACC standings, but defeated N.C. State in the ACC Tournament.

At the time of this publication, the spring sports listed below are still competing:

Softball battled through a tough non-conference schedule and climbed into the top-15 by the season's end. Duke dominated ACC play but fell in the conference semifinals, before using its signature power to advance to the NCAA Tournament Super Regionals.

Women’s golf advanced to the ACC match play semifinals before placing third at the NCAA Ann Arbor Regional. Rianne Malixi was named ACC Freshman of the Year, as the Blue Devils will return to the NCAA Championships. Men’s golf opened the season with a first-place finish at the Rod Meyers Invitational and racked up several top-five team finishes across the campaign. Recent graduate Ethan Evans tied for first at the ACC Championships. The Blue Devils competed in the Marana, Arizona, NCAA Regional, and placed fifth to advance to the NCAA Championships.

Men’s lacrosse got out an 8-4 start, virtually squashing all chances of postseason play. But an upset of then-No. 3 North Carolina helped Duke sneak into the field, where it advanced to the semifinals with wins over Richmond and Georgetown. Short stick defensive midfielder Aidan Maguire was selected first overall in the PLL draft.

Three Blue Devils earned gold medals at the ACC Track and Field Outdoor Championships, alongside the women’s 4x400-meter relay squad. The women came up just short, finishing three points shy of the title in second, while the men placed fifth.

No. 17 Duke softball upsets No. 7 Tennessee behind stalwart defense play

By Sophie Levenson Senior Editor

April 18, 2026

Ava Bradshaw looked remarkably confident, given the situation she was about to take over. The redshirt freshman stepped into the circle on Duke’s home field with two Tennessee outs on the scoreboard and loaded bases that could erase the lead the Blue Devils had held all of Wednesday night.

KK Mathis, who came in as relief in the sixth inning, had lost her edge when the Lady Volunteers figured out her pitching style. A diving catch from Layla Lamar earned Tennessee its first out, and a strikeout from Mathis secured its second, but two walks and a hit later, the bases were loaded with orange. Enter Bradshaw: The Michigan native threw a ball, then a strike, and then, on her third pitch, the ball sailed out of bounds of left field — but not out of range of the fleet-footed freshman Adelyn Matthews, whose catch in the outfield clinched the game 6-3 for her team.

No. 17 Duke welcomed No. 7 Tennessee to Durham for a midweek matchup Wednesday night. A sold-out crowd kept Smith Family Stadium loud through the whole evening, the mix of orange and blue — and a throng of kids running around — painting the scene like a Durham Bulls baseball game. An emphatic start from the top of the Blue Devil batting order kept the home team ahead of its visitors for the whole game, as did another bullish performance from senior southpaw

Cassidy Curd, who controlled the circle for 5.1 innings.

“This is what they do,” head coach Marissa Young said after her team’s victory. “They get up for the big moments, and they showed that they were ready from the first pitch of the game, and when their backs are against the wall, they play their best softball.”

D’Auna Jennings, Aminah Vega and Jessica Oakland rank at the top of Duke’s batting order. They prove, time and again, that they deserve those top spots: Vega, Jennings and Oakland lead the Blue Devils in batting average, respectively. Wednesday evening, they demonstrated just what it means to be the best batters on Duke’s softball team. Jennings made the first hit of the game in the bottom of the first against Tennessee pitcher Karlyn Pickens, who holds the record for the fastest pitch thrown in NCAA softball history. Vega followed suit, singling while Jennings ran to third base. Then Oakland smacked a homer that lit up the home crowd and sent Pickens into the bullpen through the bottom of the sixth.

“Those two at the top, D’Auna Jennings and Aminah Vega, are two of the best in the country,” Young said. “They definitely want to pass the bat and get things going. So that's what they do.”

Much of Wednesday’s victory came, too, from a stalwart Duke defense led by a fierce Curd. The top of the second inning was all her, as the Floridian pitcher struck out three Lady Volunteers to keep the visiting team scoreless. Other Blue Devils got involved in later innings,

though: In the top of the third, shortstop Oakland caught a foul ball veering out of the diamond and Lamar ran to snag a ball flying into the outfield. Curd caught her last batter’s bunt and lobbed it to first base.

Duke had no luck batting in the second inning, but found some more in the third. It looked like the half-inning might be hopeless for the Blue Devils: The Lady Volunteers tagged Jennings out at first and caught Vega’s soaring hit in the outfield, racking up two outs almost immediately. Oakland, however, slowed the pace with a hit that curved into right field for a single, and Tyrina Jones smacked the first pitch from Sage Mardjetko deep over the fence. Duke took a 5-0 lead over the highest-ranked nonconference opponent it has faced this season, just as the sun started to set over Durham.

“Every year, we're fighting for that notoriety and recognition, and so this helps with that,” Young said. “It also gives us that postseason feel which we're looking forward to as well.”

The Lady Volunteers finally found their way to a few runs in the top of the fifth. Curd, still pitching, hadn’t lost her edge, striking out her first batter of the inning. But Tennessee had started to figure out Duke’s best arm, and Alannah Leach took advantage of that to homer over left field. So did her twin sister, Gabby, who copied her sister and upped Tennessee’s run total to three, thanks to a batter Curd walked to first. Lady Volunteer Makenzie Butt hit what looked like her team’s third home run two batters later, so much so that the Duke

faithful sighed in resignation as they watched the ball sail toward the back wall. The home crowd switched to cheers just moments later, however, as the ball landed safely, shockingly, in a Blue Devil outfielder’s glove.

Young finally retired Curd two batters into the sixth inning, hugging her senior southpaw as the crowd clapped for her five-strikeout performance. Mathis, who threw from the circle for the first time against Campbell, relieved Curd and immediately got to work against the top of Tennessee’s batting order, back around again. The Lady Volunteers, unused to Mathis's pitching, racked up two outs in just a smattering of moments, and Duke’s 5-3 lead held.

Indeed, the only change to the score for the duration of Wednesday’s game came from Jones, who stole her way to a run, which officially doubled the No. 7 Lady Volunteers’

DUKE STUDENT EMPLOYMENT

Late rally propels Duke men's lacrosse past No. 4-seed Richmond 14-12, into NCAA quarterfinals

By Colton Schwabe Sports Managing Editor

May 10, 2026

One unique aspect of the game of lacrosse is that a scored goal doesn’t necessarily mean a change of possession. Every point is followed by a faceoff at the center dot, with each faceoff man given an equal opportunity to earn his team the ball.

The faceoff game was particularly lopsided in Richmond, Virginia, Saturday night, with Duke winning 21 of the 28 taken, nearly entirely through efforts of junior FOGO Cal Girard.

Saturday evening in Robins Stadium, the Blue Devils rode that make-it-take-it style of lacrosse to a 14-12 upset of the No. 4-seed Spiders, bringing a historic Richmond season to a close in front of the largest first-round crowd in NCAA Tournament history — and sending themselves to the quarterfinals for the first time since 2024.

“The mantra was one play at a time, and don't let your emotions determine how you're going to play,” head coach John Danowski said.

The slogan was certainly needed when a 4-0 run by the Spiders handed them their largest lead of the contest at 12-9 with under 12 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Before that point, Richmond’s only lead had been the matchup’s opening goal, and Duke’s dominance at the faceoff dot meant that the hosts were sticking with the Blue Devils despite their possession shortcomings.

It seemed that freshman Brady Scioletti’s first goal of the contest would be the one to bring Duke back within two, but the score was soon overturned by Liam Kershis’ step into the crease on the pass across on the net.

Minutes later, junior Benn Johnston — the Blue Devils’ leading scorer who had been quiet for much of the game — slid in his first goal of the night to officially make it 12-10.

“I knew Cal Girard was our faceoff guy, and he would just get the ball back. So I knew if we just kind of kept our poise on offense and took our time and really broke down the defense, that we'd more than likely get the ball back,” Kershis said on the comeback.

“And when you have a great faceoff guy like Cal, it makes that three goal deficit in the fourth quarter way more likely to come back [from].”

With Atlantic 10 CoDefensive Player of the Year Hunter Smith primarily focused on Johnston’s offensive production, it was up to Kershis — a sophomore from Wading River, New York — to carry the brunt of the scoring as he finished the victory with a hat trick and a team-high five points.

range minutes later off a Michael Ortlieb assist from behind the net to bring Duke’s deficit to a single goal with seven minutes remaining.

Points from unfamiliar names in the scoring column marked the theme in the Blue Devil victory, with freshman midfielder Anthony Drago’s first goal of the season giving Duke its first lead in the first quarter. Max Sloat, on the other hand — the Blue Devils’ secondary goal scorer on the year behind Johnston — was left without a goal or assist across the night.

Senior midfielder Jack Pappendick earned his sixth goal of the season from point-blank

“In these games, you need other people to make plays.

It’s not your stars, not Max Sloat or Benn Johnston. It’s those other guys, and that's how you get to 14 [goals],” Danowski said. “Otherwise you don't get to 14, you get to eight or nine, and you don't win and you go home. So the fact that we had production from other people was really a big deal for this team.”

Girard’s faceoff win gave Duke possession after the Pappendick score before a Johnston rocket equalized the game at 12-all less than a minute later. The Spiders subsequently won a rare faceoff as time resumed but couldn’t capitalize on the

critical opportunity as the clock neared the end of the fourth.

After a stop on the Blue Devil defensive end, a diving goal from sophomore Kyle Colsey handed Duke the 13-12 lead with one minute, 37 seconds until the buzzer. Girard and his Spider faceoff opponent, alongside the flanking wings, fumbled the ball for what felt like an eternity before the Blue Devils secured possession with under 80 seconds remaining, nullifying the shot clock on what could’ve been Duke’s final possession. But as Richmond pulled its goalkeeper to mark a man in hopes of winning the ball back, senior short stick defensive midfielder Aidan Maguire decided to forgo the game of keep away, scoring on the empty net to make it 14-12 and bring the ball back to the dot.

Girard stamped his dominant showing with one final faceoff victory due to a Spider violation, and the Blue Devils rode out the clock.

In the first quarter, over five minutes passed before Richmond’s Joe Sheridan gave his team the early 1-0 lead but it took just over a minute for sophomore midfielder Connor Nolen to bury the equalizer at 1-1 off a fastbreak catalyzed by a Mac Christmas interception.

With help from Girard’s 10-of-11 faceoff success rate through the first two quarters, Duke entered the halftime break up 6-4 before the Spiders found their bearings in the third quarter. The record-breaking crowd helped them crawl ahead of their guests — as a buzzer-beater to end the third quarter yielded Richmond a 10-9 lead — before the Blue Devils assembled their own comeback.

Duke women's track and field places 2nd, men place 5th at ACC Outdoor Championships

By Prithvi Kotapati Associate Editor

May 17, 2026

When it comes down to the wire, even a great effort isn’t always good enough.

Thursday through Saturday, the Blue Devils traveled west to Louisville, Kentucky, for the ACC Outdoor Championships, bringing home four individual event titles and 38 All-ACC honors. Despite putting up an impressive 96-point total, the women placed runner-up after a close, meet-long battle, losing the title to Clemson by a mere three points. The men placed fifth overall with 78 points, headlined by individual gold medals from senior Matt Prebola and sophomore Andres Langston.

“The women competed well,” head coach Shawn Wilbourn said. “You’ve got to take your hat off to Clemson, they stepped up too. It was anybody's meet between us and Clemson all the way to the end.”

With four races to go, it was indeed anyone’s meet. After a close women’s 800-meter event — Clemson’s Gladys Chepngetich placed second ahead of Duke’s Lauren Tolbert in third — the Tigers edged ahead of the Blue Devils, 67-64.

Then, freshman Arabella Wilson scored in the 400-meter hurdles, snagging fifth place after a personal best time of 57.88 seconds. Duke was back in the lead 68-67, with three races to go. Up next, the 200-meter. Fortunately for the Blue Devils, they had three powerhouse sprinters in the final. Clemson only had two.

In her third race of the day, junior Mia Edim crossed the line in a blistering 22.75 seconds,

securing second place with a new personal best and school record. Sophomores Braelyn Baker and Maya Collins weren’t far behind, finishing third and fifth, respectively. Eighteen points to the Blue Devils, perhaps the exact influx they needed to clinch the team title. But the Tigers countered with a triple jump victory, forcing the score to 86-83 in Duke's favor with two events to go: the 5k and the 4x400-meter relay.

Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, longdistance isn’t one of their strengths. While Clemson was able to ring in eight more points in the 5k, the Blue Devils got none. With only the 4x400-meter relay left, the Tigers now had a five point lead in the team race.

In track and field, the top eight teams score points: First place gets 10, second place gets eight, then six, five, four, three, two and one for the

remaining six positions. So for the Duke women to bridge the gap in the team race, they’d need a miracle: a 4x400m relay victory and at least a three-place lead ahead of second-seed Clemson.

In the end, even a 4x400m relay win — with a wicked fast anchor leg from Tolbert — couldn’t save them as the Tigers took second in the relay.

“It's exciting to be in it until the very last event,” Wilbourn said. “Yeah, you could look back and see different places where we could have won, or you know, made the difference, but that's just the way it goes. That's sports."

But “sports” also comes with a good deal of individual highlights. Beyond the women’s 4x400, the Blue Devils weren’t without event victories.

In the women’s pole vault, 4.43 meters was what it took junior Gemma Tutton to clinch

the ACC title she last held in 2024. Back on the track in the 100-meter relay, the quartet of Edim, Collins, Baker and senior Gianna Locci claimed the bronze medal, slotting themselves atop the program record books with a time of 43.07 seconds. Later, Edim and Baker added on to their hardware with silver medals in the 100m and 400m, respectively.

On the men’s side, spirits were high starting on day one of the meet itself. Prebola kicked off action on the field, claiming his first-ever ACC title in his final undergraduate season. Although his first attempt would’ve won the men’s event, the senior thrower kept going, solidifying his victory with a personal best mark of 71.01 meters on his last throw. Freshman Drew Smith also

See TRACK & FIELD on Page 18

college appearance and Nelson’s third game with Duke. A trio of games into the season, the Blue Devils seemed to have the wind in their sails. The momentum was not to last.

Over the next six games, Duke only once walked off the hardwood victors. Many fans who had expected their team to take down highlyranked South Carolina, UCLA and LSU early on were left disappointed. Then, when Duke also fell to unranked West Virginia and South Florida, the losses gave way to urgency and the pressure to alarm bells. Suddenly, head coach Kara Lawson’s squad sat at 3-6. Some began asking serious questions about whether this year’s Duke team was going to be competitive at all, let alone among the best in college basketball. Roberson and Nelson were among the major question marks: How well and quickly were these two healing newcomers acclimating? What roles would they need to settle into, and were they on track?

Lawson, however, saw turning points in the fog.

“It’s good to see the growth that's happening. It’s been a challenging schedule. I mean, three of the top five teams in eight days in two different cities, right? That’s hard,” Lawson said after a Dec. 4 loss to LSU. “But it’s been great for us to expose where we need to get to, and we're getting better. We're a lot better tonight than we were last week. And that's what you want. You want your team to grow through the course of the season.”

At this point in time, Lawson was also thinking differently about Nelson and Roberson than most on the outside looking in. Five minutes later in the press room post-

FENCING

FROM PAGE 13

Women finish runner-up to Notre Dame for 5th straight year

Before the men’s dramatic finish Sunday, Duke’s women were fencing in the team and individual championships. The Blue Devils went 3-1 against their four conference opponents, beating Stanford, Boston College and North Carolina.

“I saw the girls work collectively together, and they were locked in. And I feel that they had the passion to protect fencing in Cameron,” Elgeziry said. “They fought very, very hard. Every bout was higher pressure on them because they were fencing at our house. Overall, it was a good performance.”

Duke bested the Cardinal 18-9, the Eagles 19-8 and the Tar Heels 15-12 to set up a final showdown with Notre Dame. In their first three rounds, Sophia Shen and Rachel Koo excelled with a 9-0 and 7-0 mark in foil, respectively.

Then the Blue Devils came up against its kryptonite: No. 1-seed the Fighting Irish, the top team in the country and reigning conference and NCAA champion. In the 12-year history of the ACC Fencing Championship, Duke has had bad luck with Notre Dame.

In the women's tournament's 2015 debut, the team finished in second to the Fighting Irish. Then, the same happened in 2016. And 2017 and 2019. the Blue Devils won its first women’s ACC title when Notre Dame missed the 2021 tournament with COVID-19 but again were runner-ups to the rival from 2022 to 2025. 2026 was no different.

“I can't say I'm disappointed. Notre Dame was seeded number one. Our girls were seeded number two,” Elgeziry said. “We had high hopes, but they had a stronger squad in

starters, Nelson and Roberson were reaping the rewards of a year’s worth of unrelenting work in a big way.

perspective first. Ahead of the Feb. 5 Louisville game, she had no untold secrets to share.

LSU, Lawson remarked that Nelson was “starting to learn how to make plays against top competition.” For Roberson’s part, Lawson reported that the freshman had already been “rapidly understanding what we need from her, and getting better and better physically.” In the short term, the losses were the story of the day. Under the noise, though, Lawson indicated that the quiet, resolute progression she saw in the pair of recovering newcomers was going exactly to plan.

Fortunately for Lawson, the results would speak for themselves, and they would, unequivocally, prove Lawson right. Starting with that weekend’s game at Virginia Tech and extending for another 16, the four-game skid gave way to a winning streak of memorable proportions.

Kara Lawson’s quiet confidence and faith in the long game saw rewards in the form of what became a 21-8 overall regular season record and a 16-2 tack in ACC play, but the results were there up and down the roster. For

a couple of weapons. I'm not disappointed; I saw our girls show up and did what they can.”

Sunday morning, in the women’s individual fencing rounds, only senior Hava Stone made it out of her pool and lost in her quarterfinal matchup. For both men and women, Elgeziry had focused the team’s effort on the team competition, reserving his best fencers for the team event while giving all his fencers a chance to fence in Cameron.

The move paid off, especially for the men.

By the time Duke had closed out its Jan. 29 defeat of Miami on the road, Nelson boasted 10 double-digit performances on the season and was coming off an 18-point double-double at Pittsburgh. Roberson had similar numbers to her name and had also recorded a doubledouble during Duke’s trip to the Petersen Events Center.

“They’re probably our two most improved players from the start of the season 'till now,” Lawson said after the late January win at Miami’s Watsco Center. "So I think there's more to come for both of them, and if they can keep capturing growth, we'll be a better team a month from now than we are right now because of those two.”

The Blue Devils are now the champions of the ACC. But a week before its overtime takedown of Louisville, Duke women’s basketball had already closed its regular season as one of the best teams in the country. The win streak did not live on forever, ending at the hands of a buzzerbeating 3-pointer at Clemson on Feb. 22. Even as Duke was unable to save the outcome of that game, it was Nelson, again, who gave the Sisterhood a last burst of life in the closing minutes. Catching a baseline pass from Ashlon Jackson, she sent a contested corner three through the nylon to put the Blue Devils up 51-50 with 9.3 seconds left on the clock.

Perhaps Nelson’s consistency in those pressure-packed moments is best encapsulated by her level-headed approach to the spotlight, which puts trust and

TRACK & FIELD

FROM PAGE 17

launched his javelin to a personal best, claiming fourth place.

“I know we won the title last year,” Wilbourn said. “But you know, the men that we had this year, every guy we brought to the meet really stepped up and competed well.”

Duke’s decathletes dominated the podium after two days of competition. Fresh off a stint of missed time due to injury, graduate student Maxwell Forte put together his first full decathlon in over a year, scoring 7686 points to clinch the silver medal. Fellow graduate student Michael Bennett rounded out the podium after the 10 events, coming in at 7528 points.

“Both of those guys are two of the best decathletes in the country,” Wilbourn said. “That's going to be exciting, to see them compete in Eugene [Oregon] in a month.”

As competition came to a close on day three, it was Langston’s time to shine. The Indiana native raced the 400-meter hurdles in dominant fashion. After developing a lead around the final bend, he accelerated through the final 100 meters to a mark of 49.24, breaking a 27-year-old school record in the process. Later, fellow sophomore Aden Bandukwala claimed the bronze in the 800m, improving on his fifth place finish at the meet last year.

“I’m very proud of the men's team for how hard they competed,” Wilbourn said. “To come out of that meet in fifth place was … very, very exciting and a great feeling.”

Over Wilbourn’s five years at Duke's helm, the program has centered its season around the ACC Championships. And it’s worked: five women’s titles and one for the men last year. But, as the caliber of Duke’s athletes has evolved, Wilbourn’s goals have changed.

“Whether we lose to one team or another team, they all count the same,” Nelson said of her and her teammates’ approach to the longanticipated showdown with the Cardinals. “It’s just taking it game by game. I'm not trying to make it bigger than what it is … just remembering that, listen, our game plan stays the same, our mentality’s staying the same.”

Roberson reported a similar faith in consistency, regardless of which way the results went on any given day.

“I knew coming back was going to be a lot of physicality and aggressiveness. So I feel like my approach was definitely taking it day by day, finding a win in every day, staying strong, staying mentally tough, staying resilient, because obviously the game is not going to go our way every single time,” she said.

Amid change, uncertainty and adversity, that kind of mental toughness is exactly what Nelson and Roberson have brought to the table. It was only a matter of time, it turns out, until game after game, the results did almost reliably fall in their favor.

“Trust the process, and the victories will come,” promises a sporting adage older and more storied than Cameron Indoor Stadium or Duke basketball. But in their time with the Sisterhood, these two players have found victory within the process; in those moments off the hardwood and behind the scenes that test whether a team falls apart under duress or comes together to meet whatever challenge is next.

“In the past before our program got to the level it's at, we were trying to be our best at ACCs,” Wilbourn said. “But our goals are changing, and our focus is now on the NCAAs, and that's where we're going to be at our best.”

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