Duke hasn’t won the ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament since 2013. That was the year freshman Alexis Jones took over for injured Chelsea Gray and led Duke to a 92-73 win over North Carolina.
That was the first of seven straight tournaments won by the top seed. In fact, we have to go back to 1999, when fourth-seeded Clemson defeated third-seeded North Carolina to find the last time a team seeded outside the top three was the last team standing when the confetti and balloons started falling from the ceiling.
In other words, Kara Lawson and her Duke team have their work cut out for them if they’re going to end those streaks.
Duke is seeded seventh and would have to win four games, something no ACC women’s team has ever done.
And they’ll have to do it with one of the league’s youngest rosters.
Duke has nine rotation players. Jadyn Donovan, Oluchi Okananwa and Delaney Thomas are freshmen. Taina Mair, Ashlon Jackson and Emma Koabel are sophomores. Reigan Richardson is a junior. Kennedy Brown and Camilla Emsbo are grad students. Emsbo played at Yale last season, so obviously didn’t play in the ACC Tournament. Koabel did not play any for Duke, while Mair played 79 minutes in two games but not for Duke; she was at Boston College then.
That doesn’t leave a lot of ACC Tournament experience, Brown, Richardson, Jackson for Duke, Mair for BC, none with more than one ACC Tournament under her belt.
And of course Lawson is in her third tournament, with a 2-2 record.
What is Lawson’s message for her young team?
“I think it’s a similar playbook to what we’ve had all year, just focusing in on our strengths as a team. It’s going to be tougher. You can tell them about it but they’re going to have to feel it. There’s a different level of urgency. Just getting them to stick with what we’ve done well this season.”
She adds that winning four games isn’t a priority. Just concentrate on the task ahead.
“I’m just trying to win Thursday. You have to do that before you can do anything else. In my experience as a player and a coach, you can’t get caught up in looking at what’s ahead. You don’t have a path if you lose. You just go home. Focus on what’s in front of you.”
After Wednesday’s opening day, we know that Georgia Tech is what’s ahead of Duke. The Yellow Jackets defeated Pittsburgh 73-60, a game much closer than the final score suggests.
Does Duke actually have the horses to pull off a title run?
Certainly Duke’s defense is pretty good and borders on elite when her young players stay out of foul trouble and everybody is “locked in,” which I think is what we used to call “focused.”
Duke leads or is near the top in every meaningful defensive metric.
But the offense can be an adventure. Duke is capable of putting up big numbers against good teams. Duke beat Florida State 88-46, Georgia Tech 84-46, Virginia 73-54. We haven’t had any of those 40-something-point games that plagued last season’s team, except for a 61-44 loss at Louisville and that was back on January 4.
But Duke has lost four games this season in which it held the opposing team to 64 points or less. The defense didn’t lose those games.
Duke doesn’t have a go-to scorer; none of Lawson’s teams have. Richardson keeps flirting with that status. But she’s a junior and she still has sequences like 24 points against Virginia, followed by two against North Carolina. She scored a career best 28 points in the season opener against Richmond, six in the next game against Coastal Carolina. She followed a three--point game against Stanford with 54 points over her next three games, then eight points in Duke’s worst loss of the season, 80-64 at Clemson.
Keep in mind, she’s Duke’s leading scorer, which suggests no one else has stepped into the role of go-to scorer with the game on the line.
And when she’s on, she can be stunning, quick and fluid, with a shooting stroke to die for.
But she freely admits that it helps if she she’s the ball go through the hoop early.
She needs to be on this week.
And then there’s the team’s biggest bugaboo, turnovers. Duke is averaging 17.2 per game, 14th in the ACC. Duke is 12th in assist/turnover ratio.
They can cough it up 25 times one game and then have 10, like they did in a recent win over Virginia.
Lawson never knows what to expect.
Duke can win with six players each scoring 11 points. But not with 20 turnovers.
The Blue Devils have wins this season over Virginia Tech, NC State, Syracuse, Florida State, Florida Gulf Coast, Toledo and took Stanford into overtime on the road.
Lawson says her team is fearless and on their best days they’ve shown an ability to play with some of the best teams in the country.
But it’s going to take multiple best days. And limiting turnovers.
We’ll find out Thursday around five o’clock.
They are a bunch of young stars in the making, and have something special about them: they are RELENTLESS. If they can get off to a good start, and cut down on the silly turnovers, they could make a serious run at the title. One thing is for sure ... it won't be boring !