Losing hurts.
Losing in overtime hurts worse.
Losing in overtime to end your season? That’s a whole different world of hurt.
Colorado outscored Duke 11-3 in overtime Monday night to beat Duke 61-53 in the second round of the NCAA Women’s Tournament.
If 53 points doesn’t seem like a lot of offense for 45 minutes, well it’s not.
Make no mistake, Duke has defended at an elite level this season and it did so for most of the game, certainly well enough to win. Duke held Colorado’s standout guard duo Jaylyn Sherrod and Frida Formann to 8 for 28 shooting, 1 for 8 on 3s, 4 assists and 10 turnovers.
But all season long I’ve wondered out loud if Duke could muster the offensive firepower it would need to beat a good team in March.
We found out. Duke’s fate was sealed with three significant offensive droughts.
The first came at the beginning of the game, a time when one might think the team playing at home in front of a decent-sized crowd would have the advantage.
Think again.
Colorado jumped to a 15-2 lead over the first five minutes. On the offensive end the Blue Devils missed five of their first six shots and turned it over three times in this span, two of the turnovers offensive fouls.
Meanwhile, the visitors were shredding Duke’s defense. Quay Miller, a 6-3 post scored 11 of those 15 points. It’s easy to blame Duke’s interior defense, or lack thereof and truth be told Kennedy Brown struggled mightily. She ended the game with 0 points, 3 rebounds and 4 turnovers in 31 minutes.
But it also would be disingenuous to exempt Duke’s porous perimeter defense from its share of the blame. Colorado simply got the ball inside too easily.
“I think we came out with intensity about ourselves,” Miller said “and we also knew from the scout that they press us. They like to get up. They are a high-level defensive team and we just knew we could not be timid and we had to attack it, and the more we came out attacking it, maybe that will lessen up the pressure. So it was just game planning. It was a level of focus that I think this team started out with and finished with.”
“We put ourselves in the hole a little bit,” Duke star Celeste Taylor said. “We were not playing the defense that we know we can play. We were fighting, obviously, but we just weren't clicking defensively and really focusing in on the detail.”
Duke did settle down and began chipping away at that 13-point deficit. Reigan Richardson and Mia Heide scored and then Vanessa de Jesus hit a 3-pointer and it was 15-9.
But Colorado stabilized and ended the first period on a 6-2 run, the final two points foul shots by Kindyll Wetta with two seconds left after she grabbed a miss of a Heide block, one of several key 50/50 balls that ended up in Buffalo hands in that crucial opening stretch.
It was 21-11 after one period.
Duke kept climbing the hill in the second, slipping back and climbing again. The defense started getting stops. Elizabeth Balogun scored five points and it was 23-18. Then 28-18. Then 28-22. Then 32-24. Richardson made it 32-26 but Heide missed a layup at the buzzer. It was in transition but still a very makeable shot in a game where points were hard to come by.
Duke owned the third quarter.
“I think we just know we have so much confidence in each other that, like, it was bad that we put ourselves in that position,” Taylor said “but we knew we were going to fight back. We are fighters. We are soldiers. Like we come to battle every single night. So we knew we were going to get ourselves back into the game.”
Duke held the visitors to seven points in the third period for crying out loud. Richardson hit a couple of triples, Taylor chased down every loose ball and Duke took its first lead at 41-39 on a Taylor layup. Jordyn Oliver ended the third period scoring with a short jumper and Duke was up 43-39 after three.
That’s a 41-24 Duke run.
Duke had Colorado on the ropes and one of the program’s great comebacks so close it could be tasted.
Then came that second drought. Colorado went zone and Duke’s offense went splat. Richardson said Duke got good shots and just didn’t make them but the eye test suggested Duke was a bit flummoxed. Missed shots, turnovers, poor defensive rebounding and Duke was down 46-43.
It took Duke over six minutes to score in the fourth period, a 3-pointer by Balogun that tied it at 46.
But that marvelous defense gave Duke a chance. After taking that 46-43 lead Colorado went 3:33 without a point.
Taylor put Duke up 50-46, with 1:41 left.
It would be Duke’s last field goal.
A couple of stops and it was survive and advance.
Duke couldn’t get those stops.
Sherrod scored at the rim. 50-48.
Richardson missed a jumper. Sherrod scored at the rim again, pump-faking Brown into the next area code.
“When I got downhill, I knew that my man had got screened off and it was 6'6 on me.” Sherrod said. “I knew like nine times out of ten, you give a 6'6 player a pump fake when you're 5'6, they are going to want to swat it into the stands. I think just knowing that and also knowing we needed a score, I was like, either I'm going to get fouled or get the layup. I wasn't expecting her to foul but I had to do something to get her engaged with the ball and I couldn't just go straight up.”
She drew a foul but missed the foul shot.
Duke had a chance to pull it out. But Shayeann Day-Wilson missed a 3.
Lawson said Day-Wilson had the ball in her hands because Lawson wanted the ball in her hands.
But Day-Wilson ended the game 1 for 9 from the field, with no assists and four turnovers.
Maybe she was the best option with the season on the line. Which says something about Duke’s offense.
The overtime was a disaster. Day-Wilson made one of two from the line but that 51-50 lead was short lived. It was 52-51, then 54-51, then 57-51.
The key sequence started with about two minutes left and Duke down 54-51. Balogun had a good look at a 3 but missed. Sherrod missed on the other end but Aaronette Vonleh muscled away the offensive rebound and scored inside.
That may have been the most surprising part of Duke’s loss. Duke was outrebounded 44-35, allowed 16 second-chance points to six and was outscored 34-20 in the paint.
“Every time I went to the huddle, T [associate head coach Toriano Towns] was telling me to crash,” Miller said, “and I just tried to do the best I could. Kept telling me to crash, and I was just trying to grab every board that came my way.”
Duke sometimes struggles to score but rebounding has been a strength of this team.
Balogun got two from the line but it was too little, too late. Colorado finished it out from the line, as Duke missed all seven of its field-goal attempts in overtime.
Duke shot 31.7% from the field, 21.7% (5-23) from beyond the arc and turned it over 21 times.
Colorado shot 36.5% and turned it over 23 times. But those offensive rebounds spelled the difference.
Celeste Taylor was a made shot or two from one of the epic games in Duke history, She had 10 rebounds, 10 steals and eight assists. But she hit only 3 of 14 from the field, missing all five of her 3-pointers.
Balogun led Duke with 14 points, Richardson 10.
Miller led everyone with 17 points and 14 rebounds. Sherrod added 14, Vonleh 12.
This one will sting. But 26-7 is a huge jump over 17-13.
“We had a great season,” Taylor said. “I said it before, from last year to this year, like, you can't even put it into words.”
Whether Duke can build on this remains to be seen. Duke is losing some key players, Taylor and Balogun leading the list.
But that’s down the road. Tonight Lawson wanted to celebrate what this team had accomplished.
“It just was a special group, and you know, I'm not just saying this, like I really love, loved, every day with them. There wasn't a day that I didn't want to come to work or I was, you know, frustrated with this or frustrated with that. Like every day, this group came in and just worked so hard.”
Only three field goals in the final 15:39 is a brutal offensive performance. The game times were terrible with only 1,904 in attendance last night. Hoping this staff will bring us a scheme and lineup next year with some offensive cohesiveness. 26-7 is a gaudy record but only 4-7 vs AP ranked teams. You can push around the lesser teams a lot (eg, 89-49 over Iona) but you’re not gonna be elite posting other March point totals of 44, 37, and 53 (OT).