While the Duke men’s basketball team was defeating Baylor in Madison Square Garden in front of a packed house and the full attention of the college-basketball-universe, the Duke women were at home in front of a much-more modest crowd reduced by semester break on campus and holiday travel among more seasoned fans.
But their 70-45 win over Toledo might be as consequential as the men’s victory over Baylor come March.
After a dispiriting road loss to Clemson earlier in the month Duke’s women seemed to be in full rebuild mode. It was a bad loss. No way to sugarcoat it. Clemson lost to Georgia State days after the Duke game.
Duke came back home to face a pair of potent mid-major teams, Florida Gulf Coast and Toledo. Everything I said earlier about FGCU I could say about Toledo. They’re the 12-seed no 5-seed wants to see on their bracket. They came into Cameron with wins over SMU and Michigan on their resume, the latter by 23 points.
But they also were minus their best player, Quinesha Lockett, the 2023 MAC Player of the Year. She suffered what our hockey friends call a lower-body injury in Toledo’s 78-65 win over Oakland on December 17.
Still, even with that proviso Duke checked pretty much every box they needed to check. Freshman forward Jadyn Donovan scored the game’s first four points, then 6-6 center Kennedy Brown scored four, sandwiched around a Reigan Richardson stick-back and Duke was up 10-2.
Duke fell behind early in losses to Stanford, Davidson and Clemson. A good start is a good thing.
Brown (17 points, 5 rebounds) and Donovan (12 points, 10 rebounds, 4 blocks) were Duke’s only double-digit scorers.
This is not insignificant. Duke’s four double-figure scorers on the season are Taina Mair, Richardson, Ashlon Jackson and Oluchi Okananwa, all perimeter players.
Toledo started 6-5 Hannah Noveroske but she’s not an ACC-caliber defender. Duke attacked inside, early, often and successfully. Seventeen points is a career-high for Brown and it was a pretty efficient 17 points, 6-7 from the field, 4-4 from the line. She even knocked down a triple.
But Donovan could be a huge wild-card here. HoopGurlz-espnW ranked her as the number three player in the 2023 prep class. That seems a bit ambitious but she’s a major talent who’s just figuring it out.
“We’ve had a good chunk of a break between games,” she said “and the main thing for us was growth. One thing I want to grow my game is just aggressiveness and confidence and the coaches have told me to have confidence in myself. Game by game it slows down a little more. When I first got here i went ‘oh, my gosh, this is super fast’. I’m getting better with slowing the game down in my brain.”
Lawson added that she thought this was Donovan’s best game.
“It’s visible. She moves differently from other players. She’s able to do things athletically that other players aren’t and when she plays with that force it’s hard to guard her, it’s hard to score on her. She has the ability to be a double-double for us every night.”
Duke led 16-11 after one and 25-21 at the mid-point of the second quarter before closing on a 7-3 run to extend the lead to 32-25, a nice lead but not totally comfortable either,
It quickly became comfortable. Duke scored the first nine points of the third quarter, Brown and Donovan again starting the scoring.
Duke outscored Toledo 21-6 in the third, erasing any doubt as to the outcome.
“The start of the third was the biggest difference for us,” Lawson said. “That group we started in that third quarter was able to put some distance between us and them. I thought their pace, scoring in transition, they did a really good job of attacking.”
Duke’s defense against Toledo’s 3-point shooting quelled any comeback attempt. The Rockets came into the game averaging six-made 3-pointers per game but Duke held them to 3 for 20 shooting from beyond the arc.
“By and large we did an okay job of being in their space and forcing them to take shots a hair quicker than their normal cadence,” Lawson said.
“It goes back to aggressiveness,” Donovan added. “Make them uncomfortable, make them put the ball on the floor. It was down to details and controlling what we can control.”
Toledo runs a methodical offense and is very comfortable going deep into the shot clock. Speeding them up was another goal that Duke met. Duke had 14 fast-break points and 20 points off turnovers, while controlling the glass 42-25. Duke’s final tally of 75 points was 14 more than Toledo had allowed on average coming into the game.
“We felt like we could pick the pace up,” Lawson said. “It’s something we emphasized, especially when we got misses. We felt we could run on them. When they got into the half court and we were guarding them we wanted to disrupt them and make things a little more difficult, make catches hard, make passes hard, not have many open players to pass to.”
Duke goes into the holiday break 7-4 overall, with a non-conference game against Coppin State next Thursday. After that it’s ACC contests all the way down and yes, Duke will need to pull of some upsets to erase that Clemson loss.
“I do know we challenge our group,” Lawson said of Duke’s schedule. “We could have easily gone out and scheduled teams that we beat by 50 or 60. I think both of these teams [FGCU and Toledo] will play in the NCAA Tournament and I think wins over quality teams matter. We’ve played people. The intention was to prepare our team for ACC play.”