The Duke Blue Devils hosted the North Carolina Tarheels in Durham for an early evening ACC battle that saw Duke edge UNC 11-10.
UNC jumped out to an early 4-1 lead behind 2 goals from Chris Cloutier and a goal each from Timmy Kelly and William Perry. But Justin Guterding answered, scoring 2 goals just 32 seconds apart midway through the second quarter to get Duke back in the game.
Brad Smith tied the game at fours on a goal assisted by Guterding. The duo had a monster day with Guterding putting up 4 goals and 3 assists and Smith netting 4 goals with 2 helpers.
It went back and forth from there with Kelly and Cloutier both scoring again to put Carolina back on top by two, but Joe Robertson and Brad Smith answered for Duke notting things back up at nines.
From there, Peter Conley scored with 11:32 left in the fourth, and Justin Guterding netted his fourth goal of the game with 9:15 left, giving the Blue Devils a two goal advantage they would not relinquish.
Chris Cloutier went 3 and 1 for UNC and teammate Timmy Kelly was good for a hatrick of his own. Both goalies, Alex Bassil and Danny Fowler made 9 saves on the day, a big win for Fowler.
North Carolina has now dropped five straight games after starting the season 6-0 and things don’t get easier as they face Virginia, Syracuse and Notre Dame over the final three contests. Duke improves to 9-2 on the season and travels to South Bend to take on Notre Dame.
