The Duke game was one of the more painful of the season. The loss had nothing to do with talent, just really came down to poor decisions at the end of the game -- players and coaches.

If I recall correctly VT was up by a goal with about 20-30 seconds left. Our goalie had possession. She cleared it to a player who immediately ran towards the sideline while being double teamed. In essence, the VT player created her own third defender. Not a great decision. She proceeded to lose the ball out of bounds. The Duke player did an immediate restart, which VT players didn't seem ready for and Duke scored with about 10 seconds left in the game. VT did not seem ready to re-defend after the turnover, which was a big mental mistake.

While it would have been best for the VT player not to run the ball up and get trapped on the sideline, given this same scenario a better play may have been to simply throw the ball as far into the VT offensive zone as possible. Ideally to the end line. Doing so would have pretty much run out the clock. Even if Duke had recovered the ball the likelihood of them being able to bring it up field prior to the clock hitting zero was small. Especially knowing the VT players would have fought for the ball and/or defended the ball. And even if Duke did get the ball back into their offensive zone the likelihood they would have had an open shot like they did on the turnover was very small. You never know what will happen, but this seems like it would have been a better strategy compared to the one executed.

They say its a game of inches and this certainly was one of them. This was not a skill issue, it was a strategy issue. And strategy falls on the coaches. They let this one get away from them and I'm sure they would like to have a re-do of those last 20-30 seconds. I'm confident the outcome would have been different.