Duke’s women’s basketball team ran its record to 2-0 with an 88-42 win over Coastal Carolina.
Sophomore Ashlon Jackson led Duke with 25 points, knocking down five of 11 from beyond the arc, reminding people why she won the McDonald’s 3-point shooting contest as a prepster.
This was three days after going scoreless against Richmond.
Jackson said nothing changed over that span.
“Tonight it was just one of those nights where, okay, the energy shifted.”
She was joined in double figures by Kennedy Brown (career-high 16 points), Emma Koabel (career high 12 points) and Jaydn Donovan (career-high 10 points, but it’s her second game, so duh).
It wasn’t an aesthetic masterpiece. College games on November 9 rarely are. Duke fouled way too often, 22 fouls total--and there some flow issues, caused in part by the frequent substitutions and stoppages caused by the fouls.
“This was a hard game to get a rhythm in for us,” Kara Lawson said. “I thought we were undisciplined in the first half, fouling too much obviously. I thought we helped them score in the first half. They were having a hard time scoring against our offense and then we kept putting them on the line.”
But Duke also forced a jaw-dropping 30 turnovers, with 18 steals and 12 blocks. I counted four shot-clock violations and it would have been five had Koabel not notched a steal with a second left on the shot clock.
“Be disruptive,” Jackson summed up her team’s defense. “We rep it in practice. It wasn’t really the best night for us defensively but when we continue to lock in, continue to rep it, more to come.”
Deaja Richardson led Coastal with 12 points. In addition to the turnovers they shot 28.8 percent from the field and 42.9 percent from the line.
Coastal had three assists. Three. You don’t see a lot of minus-27 assist/turnover differentials.
The outcome was never in doubt. Brown hit a pair of 3-pointers--her first at Duke--and Donovan got a couple of stick-backs at it was 10-0 less than three minutes into the game.
It reached 14-0 before the visitors found the scoreboard. It was 26-9 after one period, 45-21 at the half, 66-34 after three. Coastal’s biggest run was six points, cutting a Duke lead from 16-3 to 16-9.
Duke hit a school-record 14 3-pointers out of 33 attempts, with six different players connecting from beyond the arc.
And Duke did clean up some areas after intermission. Coastal was plus one on the boards in the first half, Duke plus six in the second half. Duke committed 15 fouls in the first half, seven in the second half, nine turnovers in the first half, seven in the second half.
“Yes, that’s what we’re looking for,” Lawson said of the halftime improvements. “The games are unpredictable and you don’t know what the issue is going to be all the time. So, if we can become a team that can adjust out of halftime and shore up some things we did poorly in the first half, that will be critical for us going into conference play.”
I’ll take a deeper look at the this team in a few days, after Sunday’s exhibition against the U.S. National Team.