I had a chance to catch a Duke women’s basketball scrimmage and talk to Kara Lawson Saturday morning.
What did I learn? Well, I’m always reluctant to draw too many conclusions from public scrimmages.
And I sure wasn’t keeping stats.
But it did seem like a lot of possessions ended without a score.
Which shouldn’t be.a surprise.
Let’s go back to last season. Duke’s defense was elite, suffocating, confrontational, in your face. The Blue Devils allowed 51.0 points per game, Only Norfolk State allowed fewer and they play a much lower level of competition. In fact Duke and South Carolina (4th, at 51.3) were the only power-conference teams in the top 14 in that category.
Teams shot 35.2 percent against Duke.
Duke held Miami to 40 points, North Carolina to 45 and 40. Duke held Austin Peay scoreless for the entire first period in a 74-31 win, held ACC foe Boston College to 27 points for an entire game.
You can win a lot of games holding teams to 40 points.
But somewhere along the way Duke lost its offense. With a chance to clinch a share of the regular-season title Duke lost to North Carolina 45-41. At home, on Senior Day, with a capacity crowd. Duke scored a combined 81 points in two ACC Tournament games and lost at home to Colorado in the NCAA Tournament, 61-53 in overtime, three points in overtime.
Duke was 12th in the ACC in points per game, at 63.6.
Then Duke lost its top three scorers from that team. Finding some shooters would seem to have been a key to the off-season.
I’m not sure Duke found any shooters.
Duke brought in six newcomers, which is about par for the course these days.. But it seems like a paradigm shift is at work here. Lawson brought in 12 transfers over her first two full seasons. That’s not counting a couple of walk-ons and that’s not counting Shayeann Day-Wilson, who signed with Syracuse but never played there due to the abuse scandal.
This year there are only two transfers. And four freshmen, the biggest freshman class she’s had.
“I think each year is its own animal,” Lawson says “and you kind of look at what your roster needs. The fact that we finally had time to recruit high school players--I’d love to bring people in and keep them for four years and develop them. This year’s freshman class is the best we’ve had since I’ve been here.”
Camilla Emsbo is 6-5, a grad-student transfer from Yale. She didn’t play last year due to a knee injury but she was first-team All-Ivy in 2022, averaging 14.1 points, 10.2 rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game.
Best of all, she wasn’t wearing a knee brace this morning.
I asked Lawson if Emsbo and 6-6 holdover Kennedy Brown could play together.
“We’ll see. We’re trying all combinations. They are playing together in practice. We’ll see how that goes.”
Can she even come close to replicating those numbers in the ACC?
TBD.
But we know the other transfer can play in the ACC. Taina Mair was a freshman last season at Boston College. The 5-9 point guard was second in the ACC with 6.6 assists per game. She was 7th in the ACC with 2.0 steals per game and averaged 11.1 points per game.
Can she shoot? Well, she made 78.8 percent of her foul shots but only 29.4 percent of her 3s. Maybe the former suggests she can improve the latter.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Duke hasn’t had a pass-first point guard like Mair for a long time. As exciting as Day-Wilson was she was a wing trapped in a point guard’s body. Day-Wilson averaged 3.1 assists per game in two seasons at Duke.
“She’s learning and growing,” Lawson said of Mair. “She does see it [the floor] very well. She’s got experience within the league, which I think will help her. I think she’ll be a good weapon for us at that position.”
The other four newcomers constitute what Lawson calls the best class of her career. “They’re very athletic, long. It’s just a matter of us teaching them and them picking it up. Can they do it [play defense] at a consistent level? That’s always a challenge for freshmen.”
Jadyn Donovan headlines the class. Hoopgurlz/espnW ranks her as the number three recruit in the class although other evaluators have her more in the 7-15 range. She’s 6-0 tall, tough and smart. She could be Duke’s next defensive standout and she attacks the basket with abandon.
But she’s not a shooter, not yet, anyway. Playing a tough schedule at Sidwell Friends High in the D.C. area, she averaged 14.8 points per game. She had 12 points, eight rebounds, two steals and two blocks in the McDonald’s All-Star game. She made only 3 for 9 from the field but got to the line eight times, making six.
Maybe more Karima Christmas, less Haley Gorecki. But she’s going to play. A lot.
The other three freshmen are 6-3 Delaney Thomas, 5-10 Oluchi Okananwa and 6-4 Jordan Wood. The first two are top-30 recruits, Wood a top-60 recruit.
They will join a modest four holdovers, a list that unfortunately doesn’t include Vanessa de Jesus, out for the season following knee surgery.
Kennedy Brown is the incumbent center. Emma Koabel is a sophomore guard from Canada who played sparingly last season.
I asked Lawson where the points were coming from.
“I don’t know yet. I think we’ve got some talented offensive players. But I’m still figuring it out. So many of the players are new to the team. We’re just 10 practices in. I’m just getting engaged to see where can they be successful, where can they be productive. Once we figure that out better, we’ll try to put them in positions to score.”
The two key returnees, maybe the two key players for the season are 5-11 junior Reigan Richardson and 6-0 sophomore Ashlon Jackson.
Both were McDonald’s All-Americans and Jackson even won the 3-point contest. Both showed flashes last season, especially Richardson, who was a standout defender. She only shot 26 percent on 3s. But she made a game-clinching 3 at NC State, knocked down a pair against Miami. Lawson had Richardson running point a lot in practice today.
We know she can defend at a high level. Did she spend all summer in the gym, working on her shot?
Same question for Jackson, who had that freshman deer-in-the-headlights look last season.
Jackson made 31 percent of her 3s last season.
The points are going to have to come from somewhere for Duke to be in the NCAA picture and I think Richardson and Jackson have to be the ones to check that crucial box.
“We need them to be good,” Lawson says of the duo. “We need them to be good two-way players. We need them to be consistent, scoring the ball, defending the top wings in the league. So, it’s going to be a tough challenge for them. But they’re both capable.”
With de Jesus out Duke is down to 10 recruited players. It’s a curious roster. I’m not sure who plays power forward. From what I saw from Brown last season and what I saw from Emsbo for an hour, I’m not sure either has the lateral quickness to make twin towers work.
Wood is 6-4 but painfully thin and she doesn’t have the profile of someone who comes in a contributes right away at this level.
Thomas looks like a better bet. Based on what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen, I think she can play right away. But she averaged 15.4 points and 7.1 rebounds last season in the prep ranks, stats that suggest complementary player for now.
In fact, it’s entirely possible that Mair, Richardson, Jackson and Donovan are Duke’s four best players. Can you start all four? Elizabeth Balogun was 6-1 and she was a solid ACC power forward. Can Donovan at 6-0 fill the same role?
“Every position is open,” Lawson says. “They’ll compete for it. We have capable players. We’ll have to see who wins it. The freshmen have just as good an opportunity as any other players.”
For the time being at least it seems like Lawson is going to continue to ride defense as far as it can take her team. But last year’s team was deep and experienced and could just roll out fresh players, one after another after another. This team likely is going to have to ask key players to play more minutes.
Ten days into fall practice and lots of questions remain unanswered, with the answers perhaps weeks off, perhaps months off.
Lots of ACC teams have gotten better since last season and I haven’t seen anyone put Duke in any preseason top 25s. Is this the year Duke women’s hoops hits reset and takes a step back?
Or is it a team with a lot of under-the-radar players ready and able to step up and go dancing again in March?