CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Pick a style of play. Any style. Duke has demonstrated the last three weeks it has the ability to adapt to whatever a game requires.

A week after a methodical victory at Notre Dame, the Blue Devils handled Virginia 18-13 on Saturday while thriving in a frenetic pace.

Senior Justin Guterding scored four goals and added five assists and faceoff man Brian Smyth added two vital goals for Duke (11-2, 3-1 ACC), which used a pair of dominant 10-minute stretches to create separation against the Cavaliers (9-4, 1-3).

“It is encouraging,” Guterding said. “We can play any way any team wants to play against us. If a team wants to play zone, we’ve been working and we got a lot better as you saw today. We didn’t practice zone all week. We weren’t ready for them to play zone, but I thought our guys responded well and we were able to hit shots.”

It was Duke’s 10th consecutive victory over Virginia and its 18th in the programs’ last 19 meetings. The Blue Devils also clinched the No. 2 seed in the ACC tournament later this month.

Those are the notable developments in the here and now. But for a Duke team angling for an extended May stay, the adaptability displayed over its last three games is reason enough to believe the Blue Devils’ three-year absence from Memorial Day weekend is poised to end.

The Blue Devils dealt with 60 minutes of zone from North Carolina and escaped with an 11-10 victory. They showed the necessary patience against Notre Dame and its stingy man defense, manufacturing an 8-2 victory in South Bend.

Now comes a shredding of a surprise zone look from Virginia while building a 5-1 lead in the first 10 minutes and a game-sealing 6-0 run in the third and fourth quarters.

“Duke’s at the level they’ve developed their athletes,” Virginia coach Tiffany said. “They recruit great men, they’re developing them and they’re making them better fundamentally sound lacrosse players. And they can make adjustments. I give them a ton of credit with what they’re doing.”

The late run was sparked just after Virginia closed within 12-11. Smyth, who has split time with Joe Stein all season, wasn’t used much in the first half Saturday. But coach John Danowski changed things up in the middle of the third quarter.

Smyth scored seven seconds after the Cavaliers trimmed the deficit to one to deliver an emphatic reply.

“I’d only taken a couple faceoffs and was trying to win a faceoff,” Smyth said. “I fumbled the groundball a little bit and saw the top defender didn’t slide to me, so I just took it in and shot it low.”

It didn’t put the game away, but it did provide some relief. With Smyth winning some faceoffs -- and even scoring another goal -- the Blue Devils would score five times in a span of 4:04 in the fourth quarter to seal the victory.

“That kind of let everyone take a deep breath and we were just, ‘We got this. If we do what we were doing in the first half, we’re fine.’” Guterding said.

Faceoff play was a bit of question for the Blue Devils entering the year. Smyth, a sophomore, attempted just 33 draws last year. Stein is a freshman. Dominance wasn’t to be expected.

Stein sits at 57.5 percent on the season and Smyth has won 44 percent of his attempts after delivering his first multi-goal game. Both have had good moments, but the best thing about the tandem mirrors Duke’s strength as a program: There are options available regardless of the situation.

“They possess two different styles and so one’s a little more of a grinder and the other is more of a technician with his hands,” Danowski said. “They’re both gaining experience week after week. The hope is that if one falters, the other can step up. As the weather gets nicer and it gets warmer, you’re going to need two people to faceoff.”

It was the most lopsided loss of the season for the Cavaliers, who had dropped games to Syracuse, Notre Dame and Johns Hopkins by a combined five goals. Virginia will be assured of its first ACC tournament berth since 2013 if North Carolina loses next week against Notre Dame, but wouldn’t need any sort of tiebreaker if the Tar Heels lose out.

That would be a step forward in a season already defined in part by the stellar play of sophomores Michael Kraus (36 goals, 32 assists) and Dox Aitken (31 goals). Nonetheless, the long-term expectations for a program like Virginia goes beyond appearing in the conference tournament -- a feat that isn’t yet guaranteed.

“Our destiny is up to others,” Tiffany said. “There’s a game at 4 o’clock today we’re going to watch and be rooting for one team and not the other. I’m real excited we’ve made some progress around here, but we do have to get those Ws.”

They’re the ones Duke already has. The Blue Devils meet Marquette on Friday before returning to Charlottesville in two weeks. If they play as they did against Virginia --- efficiently, with decent team defense, plenty of faceoff wins and good decisions -- they could easily head into May on a roll.

“I thought we hit a lot of singles,” Danowski said. “We moved the ball smartly and it wasn’t about who was at the end of the rainbow.”