April 19, 2002

Recap| Final Stats| Photo Gallery

Maryland Head Coach Dave Cottle
"I thought we played a very good game. We almost doubled them in shots and their goalie played an outstanding game. I think he beat us a little bit. We made a lot of good plays but we just didn't make one more than they did."

On the face-offs
"I thought we did a great job. Brian Carroll has been a warrior all year and has been an outstanding senior. He took on one of the best face-off teams in the country and I thought he really did an outstanding job."

On how Duke got back in the game in the second half
"If you look at it, they had eight saves in the third quarter. We had plenty of shots and they wound up with 21 saves in the game. We haven't been able to get away when we have been playing extremely well."

Duke Head Coach Mike Pressler
"I thought we played our worst half of lacrosse in the first half. We didn't win a face-off and we couldn't clear the ball. Everything went awry in the first half. Number 31 [Goalie A.J. Kincel] kept us in the game. I lit my guys up at half time. We could not play any worse and I think our guys certainly rallied in the third quarter. Getting the first goal of the third quarter was critical for us. Then we made it a battle. Then it became the Duke-Maryland game."

On A.J. Kincel's performance in goal
"I've been coaching lacrosse for 18 years and two of the greatest performances I've seen have both been by Duke goalies: Matt Breslin against Hobart in 2000 in the NCAA tournament and A.J. Kincel against Maryland in the ACC Tournament tonight. I've been coaching a lot of games and that's playing against great goalies. You look at the stats here and we got murdered in every statistical category except for number 31. When you play a net sport -- soccer, hockey, lacrosse -- that one position can make the difference. We did not play well and the stats back it up. Maryland probably beat us today, but our goalie was good enough to beat Maryland and that's the story today.

Duke's A.J. Kincel
"It's a great rivalry. Every time we play Maryland it's a battle. It's something that both teams get really excited for and fired up about. It brings out the best in a lot of people. We just played really well on defense. We have a lot of things to fix, but hopefully we can carry it over to Sunday."

On keeping NCAA Tournament hopes alive
"We knew coming into today that we pretty much had to run the table. It's something that we were looking forward to. It's a great feeling to put all the chips in the middle and see if you can step up to it. Today we did and hopefully we can do it again Sunday."