CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – When Scottie Rose Growney, Ally Mastroianni and Jamie Ortega arrived on North Carolina’s campus as freshman recruits in 2017, they, naturally, had zero career losses against bitter rival Duke.
Five seasons later, nothing’s changed.
Growney scored a team-high five goals and Mastroianni and Ortega added four goals each as No. 1 UNC cruised past No. 5 Duke 18-4 in a ranked women’s lacrosse matchup Thursday at Dorrance Field.
With the win, the Tar Heels (15-0, 8-0 ACC) clinched the outright ACC regular season title and secured the No. 1 overall seed in next week’s ACC tournament at Notre Dame. Their top seeding status also ensures that, if they reach the ACC title game, they’ll host it in Chapel Hill on May 7.
Duke (15-2, 6-2 ACC), which entered Thursday on a nine-game win streak, would have clinched a share of the ACC regular season title and the No. 1 seed with a win. Instead, it will likely be the No. 3 seed.
This 14-goal rout also gave UNC and longtime coach Jenny Levy their 13th consecutive win over Duke and 16th in their last 17th meetings, a streak that’s proven solid regardless of the game-by-game context. Why? Allow Growney and Ortega, fifth-year players yet to see a Duke loss, to theorize.
“There’s that bitterness that you don’t want to lose to Duke no matter what, so you’re going to fight like hell to make sure that you never do,” Growney said. “I think that’s been our mentality: No matter what’s going on, keep the pedal down and just kill them. Score as much as you can.”
“Being able to go undefeated, in that sense, is amazing,” Ortega added.
Levy, a longtime friend of Duke coach Kerstin Kimel, was more measured in her analysis, emphasizing that “the game has no memory” and compartmentalizing that streak as a good run of “one-time hits.”
Still, 13 wins in a row is 13 wins in a row. And speaking of that pesky context the Tar Heels enjoy shrugging off when they’re facing the Blue Devils, this much-hyped regular-season finale had a lot.