CARY, N.C. -- Asked Saturday if they could even recall the team that last scored against them, let alone the details of the play on which it happened, Penn State captains Raquel Rodriguez and Mallory Weber glanced at each other with looks familiar to anyone ever caught in a pop quiz.
"I think it was against Illinois, just in the last few minutes of our first Big Ten tournament game," Weber eventually and hesitantly offered. "But I think I just remember that from reading in the paper, all the articles [about the team's ongoing shutout streak]."
Her hunch was correct. Leading 3-0 in a Big Ten quarterfinal against Illinois on Nov. 1, with Rodriguez and Weber among the starters by then resting on the bench, the Nittany Lions conceded a goal in the 77th minute. They didn't allow another that game. They haven't allowed one since, a streak that reached seven games and 643 minutes after Friday's College Cup semifinal win against Rutgers.
"I don't think I remember that," Rodriguez added of the Illinois goal.
At some point all the goals that weren't scored begin to run together.
Someone Sunday is going to score the goal that wins her school its first national championship when No. 1 Penn State plays No. 3 Duke, whether that goal is scored during the game or during the penalty shootout that would break a tie after 110 minutes of regulation and overtime. The memory of that ball finding the back of the net will most assuredly linger late into life for all involved, pleasantly for the winners and painfully for the losers. But Duke and Penn State have the opportunity to make that memory in large part because of how successful they are -- how successful they became -- at preventing goals.
Penn State hasn't allowed a goal in more than a month, outscoring opponents 22-0 in that stretch. But Duke has its own streak, as impressive in accomplishment if not statistics, having beaten the SEC, Pac-12 and defending national champions in successive weeks, the first two on the road, because it limited three of the nation's best offenses to a total of two goals.
One team attacks to defend, the other defends to attack. Neither gives up many goals.
"It's interesting to watch these two teams right now," Penn State coach Erica Walsh said. "In many ways, I think they are a mirror image of one another, in terms of the growth we've both experienced."
Neither team will start a senior on the back line in Sunday's final, remarkable enough in a setting where veterans are the norm, but Penn State takes it to an extreme with essentially a five-person rotation for four spots that includes two freshmen and three sophomores. The middle of the back line features a true freshman in Kaleigh Riehl and a sophomore who arrived at Penn State as a goal-scoring attacker in Elizabeth Ball.
They were so overawed by their surroundings Friday that in addition to the shutout, Riehl added her first career goal for good measure.
"They've been willing to adapt and play in roles, like [Ball] is not a natural defender, but she plays like she's been playing there for three or four years," Weber said. "You see them at practice every day, out early and just wanting to get better. I think that desire and that work ethic has just allowed them to grow so much in the past two months, three months."
Yet the most important part of Penn State's defensive effort isn't the back line, or even redshirt senior goalkeeper Britt Eckerstrom, talented though all of them may be. The core of Penn State's defensive success are its three midfield players, in particular Emily Ogle and Rodriguez, who sit just behind the three forwards and attacking midfielder Nickolette Driesse.
If Penn State wins its first national championship, Ogle or Rodriguez may or may not score.
But if Penn State wins, those two, in concert, will definitely control the field.
They build the possession that keeps the ball from opponents, and in conjunction with the forwards who never stop pressing, they snuff out opposing advances before they begin. It was an obvious match from the start for the sophomore from Ohio and the senior Costa Rican international and World Cup veteran.
"It was absolutely apparent to us right away," Walsh said, "Because not only is there chemistry with their play, but when we're walking off to water breaks, those two are having conversations, little conversations after every play. It's constant, it's after every moment. They're constantly trying to make each other better. They're figuring out ways to combine better, to defend better. They're a team, they're a unit. You talk a lot about our unit of our back line, but I think the midfield three have found a chemistry amongst them that have made them really special."
Taking out that midfield is just one more test for Duke's defense. Its run through the tournament is impressive not only for the opponents they beat, but the styles they stymied. As All-American outside back Christina Gibbons summarized Saturday: Florida loaded up its midfield and built its attack around star forward Savannah Jordan as the lone striker. Stanford's best offensive player, midfielder Andi Sullivan, pulled the strings from a much greater distance and directed an array of options across the forward lines. Florida State offered a bit of both, proven finishers in Cheyna Williams and Berglind Thorvaldsdottir fed by dynamic midfield playmakers.
"I think the same thing kind of comes with Penn State," Gibbons concluded. "There's not one person necessarily who sticks out, like a Savannah Jordan, but you know that every single person on their front line is a quality player, especially in their midfield, as well. So I think we need to take the approach that every single one-v-one is going to be a battle every single matchup that we have is going to be a battle that we need to win. Nothing really changes, aside from the fact that it's a different team. We go into it knowing we always want to have a two-v-one defensively. We always want to have each other's back and cover for each other."
A national finalist as recently as 2011 and a constant postseason presence, Duke nonetheless missed the tournament a season ago for the first time in more than a decade. While taking the blame for some of what was beyond his control, including injuries, coach Robbie Church noted the 8-9-1 record was a wake-up call that the high-pressing style he preferred had outlived its usefulness. Parity in college soccer, and especially the rugged ACC, made every game more difficult, but the recovery period between games remained as short as ever.
"It was probably my stubbornness," Church said. "We probably should have changed about two years ago, but it's hard with old dogs to learn new tricks sometimes. Finally, when it smacks you in the face that you're not in the tournament, you're looking at options and why aren't we there, why aren't we with the elite programs."
When friend and longtime trusted assistant Billy Lesesne left to take the head coaching position at Georgia, Church hired Erwin Van Bennekom to complete a staff that includes longtime assistant and former U.S. national team standout Carla Overbeck. Church had the vision of what he wanted to change; Van Bennekom had the details.
"No question about it, a lot of the concepts that we are doing this year, especially in defending, have come from him and his thought process," Church said of Van Bennekom. "We've sat down as a staff and we've made decisions. And then you look at the players in your program. We had players having to cover too much ground last year, for the last couple of years. It fit what we have in our program now."
The result is a team that defends in numbers, from the back line through its forwards, but has the speed and skill to punish opponents that get sucked into a quagmire in the attacking third. As Toni Payne showed Friday night against Florida State, Duke doesn't invade; it raids.
"From what we've seen this far, I would say they're one of the finest counter-attacking teams that I've witnessed in quite a long time," Walsh said. "It seems as though the team really believes in their tactics, they believe in what they're trying to do."
Duke and Penn State played a little more than a year ago in Durham, a wild back-and-forth encounter settled only when Rodriguez scored an 84th-minute winner to seal a 4-3 win. When they met again in August in State College, Pennsylvania, the result was a 0-0 draw after 110 minutes.
Both teams have grown considerably since that August encounter, but it served as a harbinger of what was to come.
Each in its own way was building a championship-caliber defense. On Sunday, one of them will be just that.