The Duke women remained undefeated in Cameron Thursday night with a grinding 53-44 win over Pittsburgh. The win ran Duke’s record to 19-3 overall, 9-2 in the ACC in advance of Sunday’s huge match with Notre Dame, in South Bend.
The loss dropped Pitt to 7-15 and 0-11.
First, the good news. Pitt isn’t very good. But they’re still an ACC team and holding any ACC team to 44 points is something to hang your hat on.
The Panthers shot 31% from the field, went to the foul line only seven times and turned it over 15 times.
Duke had a significant size advantage inside and leveraged that into a 45-28 rebounding advantage. Kennedy Brown (10 rebounds), Taya Corosdale (7) and Mia Heide (6) combined for 23 rebounds in 59 player minutes.
Duke had 15 second-chance points, Pitt 5 and that’s your margin of victory right there.
“Her (Brown) rebounds, I’m pleased with,” Lawson said. “We really talked about this in this match-up, winning the rebound battle and I thought she took that to heart. She was really active down there. We’ve got to find ways to free her up a little more. I think she could score more for us. But it’s physical in there and she’s got to be able to handle that physicality and finish through contact.”
Brown hit three for four from the field and finished with six points
Duke clearly struggled against Pitt’s zone. The Blue Devils hit 37.7% from the field, turned it over 19 times and missed 8 of 14 foul shots, none of the latter of which could be attributed to Pitt’s defense.
“Struggled tonight for us on the offensive end,” Kara Lawson said “but defensively we held steady. I guess that’s who were at this point, 22 games in. It’s just been a challenge for us on that (offensive) end. But I was proud of their fight.”
Maybe it came too easy too early for Duke. It was tied at 2 and at 7 but Duke never trailed and it never really seemed like a game Duke could lose.
Shayeann Day-Wilson knocked down three triples in the first 5:40 and Duke jumped to a 15-7 lead.
But the offense stagnated after that and turnovers factored into that big time.
“I thought some of the turnovers were unforced,” Lawson said. “I did think we weren’t in a rhythm of when to shoot and when to pass. I thought we passed up a ton of open shots that we should take and then we took some shots that maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Their defense was good tonight,” Day-Wilson conceded. “It just took us a while to get going.”
But Lawson praised her team for not letting its offensive woes negatively impact its defensive effort.
“They don’t get affected on the defensive end by when they’re struggle offensively. We have a mature group that way.”
Despite Duke’s offensive issues the visitors could never really string together a sustained run. Duke led 23-12, then six at 23-17 but Reigan Richardson scored on a second-chance basket and the half ended 25-20.
The lead went up and down throughout the third, 25-21, then 30-21 on an Elizabeth Balogun 3, then 32-29, then 36-32 at the end of the third.
Duke finally got some separation down the stretch. Vanessa de Jesus hit a 3 to put Duke up 40-33, then Celeste Taylor added another and it was 44-34 then de Jesus snuck behind the Pitt defense for a layup making it 49-40.
Taylor--a 90 percent foul shooter in conference games--missed 4 of 8 free throws in the final quarter and hopefully that’s an outlier.
Taylor and Day-Wilson led Duke with 13 points each. Balogun added nine. Taylor had four assists but five turnovers.
Emy Haford was Pitt’s only double-figure scorer, with 12 points. Duke held Pitt’s two leading scorers--Amber Brown and Liatu King to nine combined points on 3 for 11 shooting. Maliyah Johnson was 2 for 10.
Following the game Lawson informed us that the first half of the Duke-Florida State game last Sunday at FSU was played with a men’s ball and Duke had some trouble getting this fixed. She called out the ACC, called the whole thing “embarrassing”, “very frustrating,” “a complete failure” and “unacceptable” and said it would never have happened in a men’s game.
She was pretty upset about this and I suspect we have not heard the last of it.