The Duke women’s basketball team used a 10-0 run in the middle of the third period to key a 77-62 victory over NC State Thursday night in Cameron Indoor Stadium. The run increased Duke’s lead from three points at 39-36 to 13 points at 49-36.
The Wolfpack made some spirited comeback attempts but never got any closer than nine points at 65-56, with just under four minutes remaining. But Celeste Taylor buried a 3-pointer and Duke never looked back.
The win might have been Duke’s most complete of the season. Duke hit eight of 21 from beyond the arc, while holding State to three of 14. Duke had 17 assists, 13 turnovers, while State had nine assists and 14 turnovers. But most importantly Duke simply bludgeoned State on the glass, out-rebounding them 43 to 24 and getting 17 second-chance points to State’s 4.
“We make it a big priority on the defensive end and offensive end to rebound,” Taylor said. “We've struggled a couple of games. In a lot of the games that we lost; we struggled on the rebounding end. Just keeping certain things in mind, as far as rebounding goes, we've been just trying to attack: each person tries to get at least four or five rebounds. For the assists, we love playing with each other and I hope that everybody can see that. So, the ball just moves, it just flows naturally. You see your teammate; they have a better shot than you and you want to pass the ball.”
Lawson’s thoughts on the rebounds.
“Extra opportunities, the rebound battle is really important. You can’t always know that you’re going to shoot it well, and so to be able to get those extra opportunities is huge, and then to limit them to four I think is probably more exciting than actually the 16 that we got, because when we play our defense and we get set, if we can limit teams to one shot, we feel like we’re hard to score on.”
The ball-handling?
“We kind of scuffled with that: for most of the month of February our ball movement hasn’t been great, the ball is stuck a lot, and we just continue to hammer that home with them. Play with pace in transition, move the ball, that’s when we’re at our best, it’s what leads to open shots for our team, so it’s definitely something we’ve emphasized as a coaching staff and it was nice to see them put that to use in this game.”
.The teams traded baskets in the early going. Neither team led by more than two possessions in the opening period. State’s biggest lead was at 13-9 and they ended the opening stanza leading 15-14.
The Wolfpack played without leading scorer Diamond Johnson, out with an ankle injury. That left them with only eight players and maybe Duke’s superior depth wore them down. State’s last lead was at 28-26, with just under two minutes left in the half. But Duke closed the half on a 7-2 run, Kennedy Brown’s first four points of the game, an Elizabeth Balogun jumper and a Taylor foul shot.
The half ended with Duke up 33-30.
“The first half was kind of a little bit in rhythm, not in rhythm,” Lawson said “and that’s a lot of times normal, it’s like you’re feeling each other out in the game, and I thought we gave them too many easy opportunities in transition to start the game, but we battled back. I didn’t think we played well in the first half so to go up three at the half was like, okay hopefully we can play better in the second half.”
That certainly didn’t apply to Balogun, who had 10 points and seven rebounds in the opening half.
“I thought E was active,” Lawson said, calling her “a difference maker. She got open looks. She’s right where you’d expect her to be, as a fifth-year senior who’s been in these moments before.”
Jada Boyd kept State in the game with 11 points.
Then the roof caved in on the Wolfpack. It started when Taylor made the second of two free throws. 40-36.
Saniya Rivers missed for State and Balogun grabbed her 11th rebound and got it ahead to Taylor in transition. 42-36.
State missed again. Taylor grabbed the defensive rebound, Reigan Richardson missed inside but Taya Corosdale rebounded for Duke. A few seconds later she hit a 3-pointer. 45-36.
Rinse and repeat. A State miss, a Duke defensive rebound, a Duke miss, an offensive rebound--this one by Taylor--and a Richardson jumper. 47-36.
Another State miss. Jordyn Oliver got the defensive rebound this time. Corosdale missed, Taylor rebounded, missed, Mia Heide rebounded, drew a foul and made two foul shots. 49-36.
In a span of 3:22 Duke outrebounded NC State 8-0.
“I thought we were playing our defense and we weren’t giving them easy opportunities,” Lawson said. “We were getting back in transition, getting loaded, and then because we were getting those stops, we were able to run. We got loose for some transition layups during that time, and I think that helped us out.”
State ended the third with a 6-2 run that got the deficit back to 10, at 54-44. Duke out-rebounded State in the third 13-6, an 11-0 chasm in second-chance points.
Which led to the fourth period, which led to Taylor closing with 10 points, shattering every Wolfpack attempt to get back in the game.
State coach Wes Moore said his team did not match Duke’s intensity, especially on the boards.
“They play hard. They’re long and athletic. We didn’t play probably as hard as Duke did. They wanted it. They went and got it.”
Taylor had one of those Celeste-Taylor games, 21 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals. Balogun ended with 18 points. Richardson added nine points, Brown eight.
Boyd led State with 19 points., 9-10 from the line.
The win keeps first-place Duke (24-4 overall) tied with Notre Dame at 14-3 in the ACC, with the tie-breaker going to Duke. Notre Dame ends at Louisville and the Cardinals need a win to end in fourth place and get that double bye. Virginia Tech is 13-4 and plays at Georgia Tech.
Could get complicated but Duke controls its outcome. One regular-season game left, at home Sunday at noon against North Carolina.
So many sub-plots for one two-hour game. Senior Day, arch-rival, payback game, a chance to end the season undefeated at Cameron, a chance to capture the school’s first regular-season title since 2013, a chance to lock up top seed in next week’s tournament.
Taylor says her approach is “being able to take a step back and honestly understand everything that’s going on. But you don’t want to go into the game too emotional.”
She's had incredible buy-in to the idea that defense wins ball-games. Everyone agrees in principle but honors go to players who score lots of points. Nobody scores lots of points on this team.
How good is Kara Lawson? The players on the floor feel like an embodiment of her heart and passion.