Live by the jump shot, die by the jump shot.
The shot-gods are cruel and capricious. The jump shot comes, the jump shot goes.
Okay, I’m laying it on a little thick here. You cannot win titles without being able to make jump shots.
But the other side of that coin remains true. Defend well and good defense will always be there to help you through bad times.
Kara Lawson’s third Duke team is playing really good defense these days.
From the very beginning of fall practice Lawson’s message to her team has been simple. The road to playing time is paved with playing defense. She wants two-way players, of course and she’s still looking for some consistent half-court offense. But the default is playing good defense.
Duke started 9-0 last season before falling to eventual NCAA champion South Carolina. That streak included a win over powerful Iowa in the ACC- Big Ten Challenge.
But COVID and injuries derailed the season and Duke finished 17-13, missing the NCAA Tournament.
The expectation is that better fortunes on the health front and a solid foundation of good defense will lead to a better outcome this season.
One advantage is depth. Duke has 14 recruited players. Duke used its first two games to try out combinations and winnow that rotation to a manageable number. And work on a suffocating defense that leads to fast-break scoring opportunities.
That defense was a little too suffocating in Duke’s 77-57 opener over North Carolina A&T. The Blue Devils were called for 29 fouls and the Aggies made them pay by making 34 of 37 from the line.
Lawson and her staff got to work on the problem.
“We watched a lot of film yesterday on where we fouled, why we were fouling, and worked on cleaning that up,” she said after Duke’s second game. “The other thing we did was we got tighter in practice at calling them and making sure that they knew. So, we are trying to be more focused on the fundamentals and not fouling on drives, and also eliminating some of the dumb fouls that we did on Monday when we were far away from the basket.
Duke was called for nine fouls against Charleston Southern, a game Duke won 111-50.
Coaches and players working on solving problems. A good thing.
Yes, Duke played well against Charleston Southern. But the Buccaneers are coming off a 2-27 season. They’re the poster child for rebuilding.
Duke spent the first 30 minutes or so working on the things they hope will lead to success this season and it wasn’t pretty. Charleston Southern had 20 turnovers at the half.
Charleston Southern coach Clarisse Garcia called Duke “just long, lengthy, and tenacious, They're able to play angles very well, but they just really pursue the ball and they just don't quit. And obviously, if you don't space well and make great decisions, they are very good at converting at a high rate off of turnovers.”
Duke played all 14 of its recruited players against Charleston Southern, along with walk-on Jiselle Havas. No one played more than 17 minutes.
But Lawson made some decisions after that. For the time being at least it appears that grad-student Imani Lewis and freshmen Shay Bollin and Emma Koabel are making contributions in practice, not competitive games. Oregon State transfers Kennedy Brown and Taya Corosdale are starting inside, with Celeste Taylor, Lee Volker and Jordyn Oliver starting on the perimeter. Shayeann Day-Wilson-last year’s leading scorer--Elizabeth Balogun, transfer Reigan Richardson and freshman Ashlon Jackson are all playing starter’s minutes off the bench.
Volker starting gives some insight into what Lawson is looking for from her team. A 5-11 sophomore, Volker is hardly one of the five most talented players on the team. But she’s Lawson’s teacher’s pet and I mean that in a good way.
Here’s what Lawson said about Volker.
“You know Lee is someone that I can count on every day. She’s like the sun, she’s going to come up and she is going to set, and I know what I’m going to get from her every single day. She’s disciplined, she’s in the right place on offense and defense, she knows when to cut, she knows when to space, she can pass, she can shoot it as you mentioned, and then defensively she’s really versatile for us. She can guard a number of positions, and she is very good in the press as well. So, she impacts. I say this a lot, I’m interested in players that impact winning. Lee impacts winning. I think she’s just a key part of our team.”
Duke hit the road in game three, against Davidson. Davidson is a solid Atlantic-10 program, not a national power but a step or several steps up from North Carolina A&T or Charleston Southern.
And Duke held the Wildcats to 37 points. Davidson shot 23 percent from the field and turned it over 19 times.
But Duke only got seven points in transition and could not run an effective offense against Davidson’s half-court defense. Duke scored a miserly 10 points in the opening period and led only 26-19 at the half before breaking open the game in the third period.
Duke shot 42 percent from the field and turned it over 20 times, with Richardson coughing it up five times. Duke played 10 players. Vanessa de Jesus didn’t see the floor and backup center Mia Heide only played eight minutes, with Brown playing 32.
So, there was reason to question how well Duke would play Thursday night hosting Texas A&M. The Aggies are in their first season after the retirement of hall-of-fame coach Gary Blair. But A&M was 14-15 last season, their first losing season since 2004, Blair’s first in College Station.
Blair was replaced by former Georgia coach Joni Taylor, a proven winner who worked with Lawson over the summer for Team USA.
Taylor brought in one of the nation’s best recruiting classes, led by 6-4 Janiah Barker, a top-five recruit.
They won their first two games handily against second-tier competition. So, the game was a measuring stick for a once-proud, rebuilding ACC team and a once-proud, rebuilding SEC program.
Duke played without Corosdale, out with an injury. Lawson elected to go small, starting the 6-6 Brown with Taylor, Volker, Oliver and Day-Wilson, the latter’s first start of the season.
Could Duke’s defense hamstring a team with as much talent as A&M?
An emphatic yes. Duke hounded A&M into 23 turnovers and 43 percent shooting from the field, while outrebounding the visitors 39-25. The Blue Devils used a 14-5 run to take control. It was 20-14 after one, 40-26 at the half.
“They just played so hard,” Joni Taylor said. “I think that it was once we beat the press, it was after they sped us up, we could never get into an offensive flow. Very rarely could we set our offense and we didn’t do a good job of executing.”
Duke extended its halftime lead to 63-38 after three. Lawson wasn’t happy with Duke’s eight-point fourth quarter but Duke played much of that with Taylor, Oliver and Day-Wilson resting.
The final was 71-52.
Where does Duke go from here?
After four games there’s little doubt that Taylor is Duke’s best player.
She’s a connector, able to guard multiple positions, switch quickly and seamlessly from offense to defense and vice-versa and make her teammates better.
And the next play she takes off will be her first. There’s a risk in that. Taylor missed seven games last season with a shoulder injury and she’s always going to be diving on the floor and into the stands, regardless of the score or the time. That’s just the way she’s wired.
A&M’s Taylor said that Duke’s Taylor “is just relentless in her effort. She never gets tired. She doesn’t let the ball see. She leads them defensively by how she sets the tone.”
Taylor ended the game with 14 points, 10 rebounds, 2 steals and Duke’s only made 3-pointer.
The 6-6 Brown is an upgrade over any of Duke’s posts last season. She can initiate the offense from the high post, score down low with either hand and protect the rim. She has 42 points, 17 rebounds and 4 blocks so far.
Balogun gave Duke a lift with 15 points off the bench in 19 minutes, making six of seven from the field. She’s 6-1 but has an advanced understanding of angles and positioning and can score inside.
Consistency was an issue for her last season. If she plays like she did last night, she’s a key for Duke.
“I just try to create a mismatch,” she said. “So, I just try to take advantage of that every time.”
Lawson agreed.
“E’s a critical player for us because with her size and her length and her athleticism and then she plays and gets disrupted, she finds a way to make plays. She can make plays in traffic, she can finish in the paint.”
And Duke is going to need players who can score in the paint. Through four games Duke is hitting 13 of 57 (23 percent) from the 3-point line. Lawson said she’s pleased that Duke is finding other ways to score but acknowledged “our main thing is we’ve got to take good looks and then our guards have got to make them. I thought we got good looks (Duke was 1-10 against A&M). We’ll just keep trying to manufacture good looks. We’ll keep working. We have confidence and hopefully we’ll be a better shooting team percentage wise.”
On paper Day-Wilson and Jackson should be able to knock down threes. Jackson won the McDonald’s All-America three-point shooting contest last year. But Richardson only made 28 percent last season at Georgia and Oliver doesn’t even bother; she hasn’t attempted a single 3-pointer in 75 minutes at Duke, which is consistent with her two Baylor seasons. Oliver has made two 3-point shots in 51 college games. And she’s the starting point guard.
Three-point shooting. Next step in the team’s development? Intractable problem? Or something in between?
We will get more data points on the road. Duke’s next game is at Toledo, Sunday afternoon. Toledo won 29 games last season and finished first in the MAC regular season. They beat Marquette last season and already have a win over Cincinnati this season. So, this is not a team afraid of major-college teams.
And then UConn looms, one of the game’s ultimate litmus tests. But not taking Toledo for granted is crucial to meeting the Huskies from the best possible vantage point.
And keeping up the defense.
And making making some jump shots would be nice.
Duke should lose Taylor, Corosdale, Heide, Balogun and Lewis through loss of eligibilty. Lawson signed three players and likely is going to have to bring in a transfer post. That would leave 13 recruited players for next season, so it is not unreasonable to think that Duke could lose a player, maybe two.
With such a deep roster and PT decisions that will likely bench a few players, seems ripe for an exodus of transfers. But excited to see them rounding into shape in what is really KL's first full season with her own recruits. Health will be key esp to Taylor.