The Duke women’s basketball team kicked off the new year with a 63-56 win over Louisville Sunday afternoon. The win was Duke’s eighth straight and ran their record to 13-1, 3-0 in the ACC. Louisville dropped to 11-5, suffering its first ACC loss in three games and seeing its six-game winning streak go by the wayside.
As the score suggests, it was a battle of defenses. Louisville’s defense was better than Duke’s offense for much of the game. But Duke’s defense was a little bit better for a little bit longer.
“They played extremely well,” Louisville coach Jeff Walz acknowledged. “I thought their defense was very good but there were times when we had some unforced turnovers.”
Duke missed its first six shots and fell behind 5-0. They also lost guard Reigan Richardson to an apparent ankle injury less than three minutes into the game. She did not return and the severity of her injury has yet to be determined.
After taking that early lead Louisville scored two points over the next five minutes, falling behind 11-7. Duke finished the first quarter on a 3-pointer by Ashlon Jackson and led 18-11.
Duke’s lead ballooned to 14 points, at 29-15, with 3:45 left in the first quarter.
But the Cardinals have a marvelous junior guard named Hailey Van Lith. She scored six points in a span of just over 90 seconds, then Chrislyn Carr hit a 3-pointer and it was 30-24.
Enter Elizabeth Balogun, a former Louisville player, who may have played the best game of her Duke career. An under-sized but mobile 6-1 power forward. Balogun kept Duke ahead most of the first half and ended the opening stanza with a crucial putback seconds before the buzzer, ending Louisville’s 7-0 run and putting Duke up 32-24 at intermission.
“The offensive rebound at the end of the first half when we cut the lead to six was a really big board,” Walz said.
Louisville ended the first half with one assist against 12 turnovers.
The Cardinals tightened their defense in the second half and Duke was the team turning it over.
“I thought in the second half they were unbelievable defensively,” Lawson said of Louisville. “We were out of rhythm, we were skittish, we didn’t handle their changing defenses and their pressing and their trapping well, they did a great job. That’s what you would expect from a good team.”
Duke scored only five points in the first eight minutes of the period. But Louisville only scored nine and Duke still led at 37-33.
Now, this may read like two incompetent offenses. But from my vantage point this was two elite defenses imposing their will, aided by an officiating crew that “let them play,” to use the vernacular.
Again Balogun was the answer to Duke’s offensive questions. With maybe a second left on the shot clock she drew a foul and hit one of two foul shots to put Duke up 38-33. Following a 3-point play by Nyla Harris, Balogun scored inside to make it 40-36. Van Lith cut it to 2 but Balogun hit a 3-pointer to put Duke up 43-38 after three.
Balogun was the only Duke player to score over the final 6:28 of the third period.
“E [Balogun] is one of our best players in chaos,” Lawson said. “What I mean by that is you’ll run a play, when you’re out there you’ll call a play or I’ll call a play, and then the teams in this league are good and they scout you, so they know what’s about to come and then they do something scheme wise to mess it up, and really if you can become a good offensive team, it’s what you do after the defense messes up the play. And that’s sometimes the chaotic part of the play, it’s that it doesn’t go according to script. How do you figure it out, and she just has a way of doing that where she cuts, or she gets the pass, or she shoots the three, and she’s a mismatch for us.”
Balogun said her “being effective and aggressive on offense is just as important as our defense.”
The final period saw Duke hold off several Louisville surges, almost all fueled by Van Lith. Balogun again barely beat the shot clock to put Duke up 45-38 and the lead fluctuated between five and nine points before the Cardinals got some offense from their posts, a transition layup from Josie Williams and a 3-pointer by Olivia Cochran, the latter cutting Duke’s lead to a precarious 51-49, with 4:38 left in the contest.
Celeste Taylor may have made the biggest play of the game when she rebounded her own miss, brought the ball out and nailed a 3-pointer off a Kennedy Brown assist. Duke got a couple of stops, Shayeann Day-Wilson made two foul shots and a 3-pointer and it was 59-49, with 2:25 left.
But nothing came easy for Duke this Sunday. The Blue Devils turned it over on three straight possessions, Van Lith scored seven points in exactly a minute and it was 59-56.
“We obviously created some separation late,” Lawson said “and then weren’t able to take care of the ball there, so there’s a lot to work on.”
But Duke closed it out. Balogun made two foul shots, Van Lith missed two 3-pointers in the same possession and Jackson finished the scoring from the line.
Van Lith led everyone with 23 points, hitting 11 of 21 from the field. But she hit only 1 of 9 3-pointers, turned it over four times and didn’t get the line at all. In fact, Louisville only shot two foul shots, both and-ones.
Lawson said Duke did what it could to slow down Van Lith.
“Hailey’s special,” Lawson said. “She can make tough shots. We talked about being in her air space as best as we could beyond the arc. Some of those were open though. We made some mistakes but by and large I thought we were attached. That’s Celeste again for a lot of those possessions. Every night she’s taken the tough defensive assignment and given us a chance against the top players.”
And Van Lith didn’t get much help. Cochran and Carr were Louisville’s next leading scorers, with 8 points each. Transfer Morgan Jones, an All-ACC player last year at Florida State, had a quite night, 4 points in 27 minutes.
Duke took16 foul shots, making 14. Six of those came in the final three minutes as Louisville tried to lengthen the game. Combined with Duke’s 15 for 15 game against NC State, Duke made 29 of 31 foul shots in its two most recent games.
Balogun ended with 20 points and 10 rebounds. Day-Wilson added 12 points, Taylor 11. Jordyn Oliver (8 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals) and Jackson (7 points, 2 steals) came off the bench and had solid performances in Richardson’s absence.
Duke hits the road, playing at Wake Forest on Thursday. A great few days for the team but Lawson cautioned that success brings its own set of challenges.
“I think we can do nothing but grow from it and learn from it and that’ll be a challenge for our group, handling success. It’s a challenging thing to do, because everyone wants to tell you how good you are and everyone wants to tell you how good you’re going to be, and everyone wants to praise you and that’s dangerous when you’re on a team and it’s what I told my team after the game; you have to handle success appropriately, know there’s a lot of mistakes that were still made, and we have to keep growing. We can’t just show up Thursday and expect to win because we won our first three [ACC] games.”
Balogun said Duke will be fine as long as they remember what brought them that success in the first place.
“We emphasize defense, defense, defense. It’s nothing different from any game. So, when we step on the court, we know defense comes first and if we can stop the other team from scoring, we have a great chance to win.”
Last year's team had some players who couldn't play high-quality defense and some who didn't seem to want to. She seems to have total buy-in on D with this team. I'm not sure the ACC offers a tougher matchup than NC State in Reynolds. I think hosting come March (top 16) is very doable.
Always love Kara Lawson quotes. I remember why I always enjoyed her insightful analysis when she worked for ESPN.
I felt confident she would be successful at Duke in time. This team is showing that they're well-coached and believe.