Tar Heels best No. 8 Duke and Virginia Tech

If either No. 8 Duke or Virginia Tech were looking for cracks in the No. 3 North Carolina women’s lacrosse team this weekend, they didn’t find any.

On Friday, UNC ground out a low-scoring 4-2 win against top-10 rival Duke and on Sunday overwhelmed Virginia Tech with a 12-goal first half en route to a 15-4 victory.

“It doesn’t really matter who the opponent is,” coach Jenny Levy said. “We like to think we can impose our will on the team, so they’ve got to adjust to us.”

Though Emily Garrity scored in the first 50 seconds of Friday’s match, that quick goal belied the dreary nature of the game to come. UNC and Duke combined for fewer shots — 23 — than the sum of their average goals per game.

The two teams also combined for 28 turnovers.

Levy said that both offenses were stymied by slick conditions on Fetzer Field. The hot, humid weather of the day led to heavy condensation in the evening, which prevented both team’s players from making cuts necessary to get to the goal.

“We’re really a good dodging team,” sophomore attacker Abbey Friend said.

“We like to dodge, and if a double comes, move out of that, but we really couldn’t dodge at all, so it made us feed a little more and look inside.”

Duke wouldn’t equalize until Makenzie Hommel managed to sneak a free-position shot past goalkeeper Lauren Maksym with four minutes remaining in the first half. The score remained 1-1 at halftime.

Nearly seven minutes into the second half, it appeared that Duke had scored again on a Kerrin Maurer goal.

But a few UNC players noticed that her stick had an unusually deep pocket, and the goal was disallowed on a stick check.

“I felt like my kids made a really heads-up call by having a stick check at that moment,” Levy said. “I think that’s a huge momentum swinger at that point.”

It was. Less than 30 seconds later, the Tar Heels were the ones celebrating. Friend attempted a pass from behind the cage, only to have it blocked by Duke goalkeeper Mollie Mackler’s stick. But the ball fell out of Mackler’s pocket and rolled into the goal, putting UNC ahead 2-1.

The Tar Heels switched to a less dodge-based approach and picked up two more second-half goals. A Duke goal brought the score to 4-2 with just less than two minutes left to play, but that would be all either offense could produce.

On Sunday, UNC equaled those six goals single-handedly in the first 10 minutes of the opening half, and went into halftime with a 12-0 lead.

The Hokies struggled to maintain possession for more than a few passes at a time and didn’t seem able to keep pace with North Carolina’s speedy attackers.

Levy started pulling her starters late in the first half and didn’t play any of her first string in the second. Virginia Tech scored four goals in the second half, but UNC’s second string produced three of its own. In all, nine different players scored for the Tar Heels.

“It really showed that we do have a great offense,” said junior Kara Cannizzaro, who scored four goals on four shots against Virginia Tech.

“And Friday showed that we have one of the best defenses in the country.”

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.