“Horseshoes and hand grenades. Close doesn’t matter. It’s either win or lose.”
That’s Kara Lawson’s summary of Duke’s 77-61 loss to South Carolina’s top-ranked women’s team.
If all you know about this game is the final score, you might think it was a blow-out. But Duke led 20-18 after one period and tied the game 55-55 early in the fourth on a Reigan Richardson 3-pointer.
It was still close at 60-57 South Carolina with 5:17 left after Jadyn Donovan knocked down a pair of foul shots.
Funny thing about those foul shots. Those were the only foul shots Duke shot the entire game.
Seriously. Two foul shots. South Carolina shot 23, making 16. Duke was called for 19 fouls, South Carolina six.
For the record Lawson declined to comment on the foul discrepancy.
But she noticed.
And for the record, part two, South Carolina is a very physical team.
But the foul line wasn’t the only place where Duke lost the game. Led by Kamilla Cardoso (15 points, 14 rebounds), South Carolina outrebounded Duke 45-24, turning that into a 17-7 advantage on second-chance points.
That’s minus 14 from the foul line and minus 10 on the boards. Tough to win like that.
“It’s an issue,” Lawson conceded of the rebounding. “When we got stops through the body of the game, we weren’t grabbing the ball. There were so many baseline outs where we had done a good job of guarding what they ran and then we couldn’t get the defensive rebound. That part of it hurt us, that we weren’t able to keep them to one shot and certainly extra shots as an offense kind of safeguards, if you don’t shoot it well.”
Duke countered with 3-point shooting and defense. South Carolina had 14 turnovers in the first half, as Duke had six steals and five blocks.
“I thought we were a little antsy,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said of the opening half. “I think we saw options and we tried to exploit all of them and sometimes we had tunnel vision and didn’t make the right decision.”
Ashlon Jackson, Delaney Thomas, Oluchi Okananwa and Jackson again hit 3-pointers, helping Duke to a 20-15 lead late in the opening period.
It was Duke’s biggest lead.
But MLaysia Fulwiley picked Reigan Richardson’s pocket and hit a 40-footer at the buzzer to cut the lead to two points.
South Carolina dominated the second period, holding Duke to 4 for 17 shooting and doing all the other stuff I’ve talked about. They scored the final six points of the half and led 35-29 at intermission.
Duke fell behind by 15 several times in the third but Richardson led a comeback.
“I was missing a couple in the beginning,” she said “but everybody kept telling me to keep shooting so I kept shooting.”
Richardson hit a 3 to make it 49-37, another to make it 54-46, another to make it 55-49 and one at the third period buzzer to make it 55-52, three 3-pointers in the final 1:48.
When she hit another to tie the game at the beginning of the fourth, Duke seemed poised for the upset.
But South Carolina took control of the tempo and began pounding it inside.
“We went away from going after the shots we wanted,” Lawson said. “We weren’t as connected on offense. Their defense turned up no doubt in the fourth quarter but our execution was poor. The game slowed down a little bit. When we were at our best, there was a pace of transition and when it slowed down, slow goes to bigger people. That’s how it works. Faster is usually for smaller people.”
Cardoso scored eight points in the fourth as South Carolina closed on a 17-4 run.
South Carolina had six players score between nine and 15 points, which Staley called “the strength of our team. We always have five players on the floor who can score.”
Richardson led Duke with 17 points. Thomas had 13 points off the bench but played only 18 minutes due to foul trouble. Duke centers Kennedy Brown and Camilla Emsbo combined for 2 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 blocks, and 2 turnovers, with Brown fouling out in 13:45 trying to guard Cardoso and Chloe Kitts (14 points, 9 rebounds).
“I know what I have,” Lawson summed up. “I’ve got a bunch of fighters and they’re going to compete. We have shown the ability to compete in the environment and the next thing we have to show is the ability to win in the environment. We don’t have that yet. We need to chase after that with reckless abandon. Not everyone can do that. But that’s what we’re chasing.”
Duke opens ACC play Thursday at Clemson.
I was at the game. The foul disparity was egregious. Lawson threw her hands up on more than one occasion. Many times down we were getting hacked with no calls, and they were calling us for ticky tack fouls on the other end. The foul count and foul shot discrepancies cost us a winnable game