The Duke women found out how the other half lives Thursday night in Blacksburg. The Virginia Tech women shut down Duke 61-45 and it wasn’t that close.
“I thought Virginia Tech was great tonight,” Kara Lawson said/ “I thought they came out with a lot of energy, great physicality, great hustle and just kind of stunned us in the first quarter. It took us awhile to get into the game. We were not ready to play tonight and that’s on me. We were not sharp, we were not disciplined and you cannot win on the road not being that.”
Duke beat Virginia Tech 66-55 three weeks ago and did so in part by controlling Tech’s two stars, center Elizabeth Kitley and point guard Georgia Amoore. In fact Duke held Kitley to four points in Durham.
No such luck in Blacksburg. Kitley surpassed that with six points in the first 2:39 and it was 8-2. Amoore scored five quick points, Taylor Soule and Kitley had old-fashioned three-point plays and Duke was in a deep, dark hole at 19-6.
“I thought they made some shots they missed [at Duke],” Lawson said of Kitley and Amoore. “Tonight they made them. They were both in attack mode from the very beginning.”
The first period ended 23-11. This against a Duke team that held Miami to 40 points last Sunday, Boston College to 27 a week ago.
Duke’s defense settled down after that, giving Duke a chance to crawl back into the game given a productive offense.
The opposite happened.
Duke came out in the second period and scored a whopping three points. In 10 minutes. It took over five minutes for Reigan Richardson to make a free throw-she missed the second--and a couple more minutes for Celeste Taylor to get a layup, Duke’s only field goal in the second period.
Lawson said Tech’s defense was “aggressive, physical, we weren’t able to get to certain spots. I thought we settled.”
It is concerning that 26 games into the season Duke wasn’t able to match that aggression, that physicality and get to the spots it wanted.
It was 33-14 at the half.
There’s a buzzword in college basketball these days; “connected.”
Duke was not connected. They looked like a group of players who had just met at the bus station. With Tech shredding Duke’s defense, Duke wasn’t getting anything in transition, wasn’t getting anything on the boards, wasn’t getting to the line. Passes to nowhere, clanked layups.
And the rebounding. Oh, the rebounding. Try 41-23.
Celeste Taylor scored 12 points and competed hard. But the other four starters hit 3 of 14 from the field, with six turnovers. After back-to-back 14-point games Duke got one point from Richardson. Elizabeth Balogun somehow managed to play 15 minutes without grabbing a rebound. Kennedy Brown had two points and two rebounds in 21 minutes.
It was 51-26 after three periods.
Reserves Jordyn Oliver (7 points), Vanessa de Jesus (8) and Ashlon Jackson (8) ate into the deficit in the final period to make the final score a bit more respectable.
Kitley and Amoore led Tech with 20 points each, Kitley with 11 rebounds. Soule had 11 points, 8 rebounds and 3 steals.
Lawson said Duke “had a lot of shortcomings tonight and we have to work on those to improve.”
A lot of shortcomings is one way to characterize it.
“There’s a still a lot left for us to play for,” Lawson summed up. That starts with another road trip into the Commonwealth of Virginia, Sunday against Virginia. Notre Dame pulled out an overtime win over Louisville last night so Duke and Notre Dame are tied atop the league at 12-3 but Duke has the tie-breaker. VT is one game behind, at 11-4.
Following Sunday Duke finishes the regular season hosting NC State and UNC.
A good time to turn a lot of shortcomings into not very many shortcomings/
Every basketball team loves to get easy points in transition and off their offensive boards. But if good teams take away those two avenues, then this team just really struggles to score in half-court sets. Duke doesn't have an elite playmaker or an elite scorer and it may be too late in the season to find or develop one. For better or worse this looks like a team that will go as far as its defense takes it. As bad as Duke's defense was in the first period, Duke still could have won the game with a decent offensive performance. They just couldn't put one together. Root for a lot of 50-45 games in the post-season, with Duke the team at 50.
But they won't have Elizabeth Kilter or Georgia Amoore. Duke has three winnable games left and they need to win all three to get the best possible seed for the post-season tournaments.
And no more three-point quarters.