The Duke women also open NCAA Tournament play Friday. The Blue Devils were seeded seventh and placed in the Columbus regional, hosted by second seed Ohio State.
As with the men, Duke was under-seeded based on the metrics.
Duke opens with A-10 champion Richmond. They’ve already opened the regular season against Richmond, back on November 6th, in Cameron, with Duke winning 83-53.
Duke beat Richmond 100-49 last season, in Richmond.
That should guarantee a walk in the park Friday. Right?
Not necessarily. You might recall Gail Goestenkors’ last game at Duke, a 53-52 loss to Rutgers in Greensboro, in the 2007 Sweet 16. That loss was sealed when national player of the year Lindsey Harding missed two foul shots with about a second left.
What you may not recall is that Duke defeated Rutgers 85-45 earlier in the season. At Rutgers.
Tournament basketball is a different beast.
Richmond has won 12 of its last 13 games. Maggie Dougan is their leading scorer and rebounder; she’s a 6-2 sophomore. Duke held her to six points and two rebounds last November.
Even against lesser competition Richmond was basically even on the boards over the season. Duke outrebounded them 46-22 back in November, with 5-10 freshman Oluchi Okananwa grabbing 12 rebounds to go along with 22 points in her college debut.
Reigan Richardson led everyone with what is still he career high, 28 points, 12 of 15 from the field, 4 of 4 from beyond the arc.
When asked Sunday night about playing Richmond again, Duke’s response was about what one would expect.
“We’ve played a lot of games since then,” Duke center Kennedy Brown said. “I think we’ve both experienced a lot of growth during the season. We know what they like to do. But they’ll have the same advantage as well.”
Kara Lawson said the game was so long ago it might as well have been last season.
This does not look like a typical 7 v. 10 matchup. Duke would have to be either very overconfident or very nervous to lose this one.
Assuming Duke gets by Richmond they almost certainly will face Ohio State in front of a loud, partisan crowd.
Ohio State opens against Maine, a team that Joanne P. McCallie used to coach.
Celeste Taylor starts to the Buckeyes. After starting her career at Texas, Taylor transferred to Duke and was Lawson’s best player for two seasons. She was first-team All-ACC last season. Taylor declared for the 2023 WNBA draft, changed her mind, came back to Duke, changed her mind again, entered the portal and ended up at OSU.
She’s averaging 10.2 points per game and leads Ohio State in steals and blocks.
The team’s star is Jacy Sheldon, a 5-10 senior. She averages 18 points per game and is a second-team AP All-American.
But they’re surprisingly ordinary on the boards for a 25-5 team. Their leading rebounder is 6-0 Cotie McMahon, at 6.5 per game. Slovakian Rebeka Mikulasikova is their tallest starter, at 6-4.
They’ve been outrebounded by an average of around two rebounds per game this season.
But they shoot, defend and force an average of over 21 turnovers per game. And we know that holding on to the ball has been an issue for this Duke team.
Duke played two NCAA Tournament games last season, beating Iona and losing in overtime to Colorado, both in Cameron. Brown, Richardson and Ashlon Jackson are the only current Blue Devils to have seen much action in those games; Emma Koabel played one minute at the end of the Iona game. Neither Taina Mair nor Camilla Emsbo has ever played in an NCAA Tournament game.
Brown said her message to her younger teammates is pretty basic.
“It’s win or go home. That’s the mindset we’ve been trying to instill in everyone, just coming out and treating every game like it’s our last.”
Lawson said her message is “don’t assume they know how it goes. They’ve never done this before. They’re learning. What does the day look like? What does the week look like? I talk them through that. Just make sure they’re prepared.”
Duke has a path, albeit a narrow one, to advancing to the Sweet 16. It starts with not looking past Richmond. They are a conference champion, they are on a roll and they’re playing with house money. And Duke did lose at home this season to Davidson, the A-10’s best team until a tsunami of injuries led to them canceling their season.
Assuming Ohio State gets by Maine, the Buckeyes await the winner of Duke-Richmond. It is possible for a team to lost at home in the NCAAs. Duke found that out the hard way last season. Limit turnovers, control the glass, don’t let Sheldon run amuck and play the kind of suffocating defense Duke plays when it’s clicking on all cylinders and we have a ballgame.
That’s a lot of ifs. The biggest one is turnovers. A Venn diagram of the thing Ohio State does best and the thing Duke does worse has a big turnover overlap and Duke will have to manage that to have a chance.
Wheels up Friday at 2:30.