There’s good news, bad news and maybe some good news for Duke women’s basketball.
The good news is that the Blue Devils are coming off an 84-46 win over Georgia Tech Sunday, arguably Duke’s best game of the season. On paper this game should have something pretty close to a toss-up. Tech came to Durham 12-4 overall, 3-1 in the ACC, with wins over Virginia, Pitt and a Clemson team that mauled Duke earlier this season.
Plus Duke was coming off a 61-44 loss at Louisville, a game not as close as the score suggests and the score doesn’t suggest it was all that close anyway.
The Yellow Jackets never had a chance. Duke led 16-13 after one, 36-24 at the half, 64-41 after three. Tech scored five points in the final quarter.
Duke has had comparable defensive efforts before under Lawson. Which isn’t to diminish a defensive effort that held an ACC opponent to 35 percent shooting and five second-chance points, while forcing 17 turnovers.
It helped that Duke outrebounded Georgia Tech 42-21.
But those 84 points? Duke made half of its field-goal attempts, 59 percent (13 of 22) of its 3s and 9 of 10 from the line.
And they did it without a transcendent individual performance. Freshman Oluchi Okananwa had 21 points, Jadyn Donovan 12, Taina Mair 11 and Ashlon Jackson 11. Mair had eight assists and only two turnovers.
Lawson called it “probably our most complete performance of the season.
About those turnovers. Duke had 14, three in the final two minutes, long after the outcome had been determined.
Remember this is a team that had 28 turnovers against Boston College earlier this season and still won.
Imagine if 14 could become the new normal.
I asked Kara Lawson about turnovers at her Tuesday ZOOM and she had an interesting take.
“We’ve talked about it and they’re trying. It’s such a fine line between aggression and doing too much, being in attack mode and being over-zealous with things. When you have young players you’re trying to teach them that line. They have to go over it some time or they’ll never learn how aggressive they can be.”
Which brings me to the bad news. Duke is entering the most daunting three-game stretch of its regular season, hosting Virginia Tech tomorrow, visiting NC State Sunday and hosting Florida State next Thursday.
Three of the four best teams in the ACC; Louisville is the fourth.
Tech is led by 6-6 Elizabeth Kitley, the 2022 and 2023 ACC Player of the Year, trending towards joining Alana Beard and Alyssa Thomas as the only three-time winners of that award. She might be the nation’s best center.
Kitley has only had three single-digit scoring games over the last season-and-a-half. Two were against Duke last season, four points in Cameron, eight in the ACC Tournament. Duke beat the Hokies 66-55 in Cameron last season.
It was VT’s last loss until the Final Four.
But Duke got blasted 61-45 in Blacksburg (Kitley had 20) and 59-37 in Greensboro.
VT is not a one-trick pony. Aussie Georgia Amoore might be the ACC’s best point guard and Tech surrounds Kitley with long-range bombers.
But Duke doesn’t have a chance if they can’t control Kitley.
Lawson says she doesn’t have a magic potion to slow down Kitley.
“We just try to make things tough for her and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We try to make catches difficult, we try to make shots difficult, we try to make any dribble difficult. We try to make everything difficult. That’s all you can do with a great player like her. Just make her work for it and if she works for 30, she works for 30. If she works for 20, she works for 20. She’s seen every kind of defense there is.”
Which brings us to the maybe good news part. Charlie Creme has Duke as a last-four-byes in his most recent bracketology. Hardly a lock. Games against three top-15 teams give Duke an opportunity to move into the safe zone. But an oh-fer isn’t going to help.
Great risk, great opportunity.