CLEMSON, S.C. - In only its second true road match of the season, the fourth-ranked Duke women’s soccer team traveled to Clemson, S.C., on Sunday and took home a 2-0 shutout of Clemson at Riggs Field.

The Blue Devils moved to 11-1 overall and 3-0 in Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) action for the first time since 2004 and only the third time in school history (1995, 1997 and 2004).  Clemson dropped to 5-5 overall and 0-3 in league play. 

“Any win the ACC is obviously a great win,” said Duke Head Coach Robbie Church.  “Compounded by playing on the road really makes it a special win.  Now we have seven games left with four being on the road.  We have to get used to it a little bit more.  I thought we handled being on the road better than we did last month at Auburn.”

Duke got things going early in the match as sophomore Gilda Doria sent a perfect corner kick to the head of junior Nicole Lipp, who placed it into the back of the net.  A product of Lake Forest, Ill., Lipp posted her second goal of the season and fifth of her career.

The match stayed with a 1-0 advantage in Duke’s favor through the end of the first half that saw the Blue Devils outshoot the Tigers, 4-2. 

“I don’t think everybody was very happy with the way we started the game,” said Church.  “Except for the beautiful goal -- great service by Gilda and great header by Nicole.  It was an excellent executed set play, which is nice to see because we do work on those a lot.  It was a little bit of a lackluster first half.”

Duke exploded in the second half to outshoot Clemson, 18-0, and added a late goal off the left foot of sophomore Laura Weinberg in the 74th minute.  Weinberg, who is out of Boca Raton, Fla., bent an outstanding shot that hit the top left corner of the net as Clemson goalkeeper Morgan Hert had no chance to make the save.  The 5-9 Blue Devil forward totaled a goal in her second consecutive game and fifth of the season.

“Man, I thought we turned it around in the second half,” commented Church.  “They came out and played hard, which is what we wanted to do.  We scored a beautiful goal by Laura Weinberg.  Even if we didn’t score a goal, I was very happy with the way we played in the second half.”

Blue Devil junior goalkeeper Tara Campbell notched her seventh shutout of the season as she made one save over 90 minutes of action.  Campbell, who is out of Cincinnati. Ohio, now owns 21 career shutouts in three years at Duke.

As a team, Duke outshot Clemson, 22-2, on the day with freshman Kelly Cobb leading the way with six attempts, while sophomore Mollie Pathman had four and redshirt sophomore Kim DeCesare added three strikes.  Cobb snapped a streak of scoring goals in three consecutive games end on the day.

Duke will next host 14th-ranked Virginia at Koskinen Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 29 at 8:00 p.m.  The match will be televised on the Regional Sports Network (RSN), which locally will be on Fox Sports South. 

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