Notre Dame used a 14-0 run in the middle of the third period to blow open an ACC women’s basketball game and then held off every Duke comeback attempt for a 70-62 win Monday night in Cameron.
The loss was Duke’s second straight and dropped the Devils to 8-6 in the ACC, with a tough road game against Syracuse coming up Thursday.
Duke led by as many as six points (13-7) early but too many turnovers and too many missed shots enabled the visitors to hand around. Two 3-pointers and an old-fashioned three-point play and Notre Dame led 16-15, after one.
Baskets by Reigan Richardson and Taina Mair gave Duke a 19-16 lead early in the second but Duke couldn’t build on it and went into halftime up 30-27.
The lead could have been bigger had it not been for Duke’s 10 turnovers, a seemingly systemic problem that just seems to come back and bite Duke at the worst possible time.
It didn’t help Duke’s cause that they were outshot from the foul line 6 for 9 to 3 for 4 in the opening half.
Kara Lawson said that Richardson was the only Duke perimeter player aggressive in attacking the basket.
Richardson led Duke with 12 points in the first half but everyone else shot 8 for 22 from the field.
Duke led 37-34 when the wheels came off. Over a bit more than four minutes Duke missed four straight shots and turned it over five times.
Meanwhile Notre Dame made seven of eight shots, converting rebounds and Duke turnovers into transition baskets.
Not surprisingly Notre Dame’s marvelous freshman guard Hannah Hidalgo was at the center of the storm. She picked Richardson’s pocket--Richardson had six turnovers--and got it to Sonia Citron for a layup. She assisted K.K. Bransford for a layup that put the Irish up 40-37. She converted another Richardson turnover into a layup and it was 44-37. She assisted Natalija Marshall and it was 48-37.
“We got stops,” Hidalgo said of that decisive run. “I think we did a great job of rotating and reading their eyes when they jumped into the air to make a pass and we were in position to steal it.”
Richardson said Duke got sped up on offense and had too many breakdowns on defense.
That 14-0 run?
“They got out and ran. We struggled to get back and defend. We just didn’t talk.”
It wasn’t just the Notre Dame stars. Sophomore reserve K.K. Bransford scored six points during that run, after a scoreless first half.
“I would say she was a big contributor to that 14-0 run, Notre Dame’s Niele Ivey said. “I thought she played determined, took great shots, was really active defensively and made great plays.”
Bransford had six points, two rebounds and a steal in just the third quarter.
Notre Dame led 48-39 after three.
We saw Duke come back from a bigger deficit against North Carolina. But this time Duke couldn’t string together enough stops, couldn’t put together a run. Ashlon Jackson and Oluchi Okananwa went scoreless until the final minutes and Hidalgo (7 points) and Westbeld (6) scored enough in the final quarter to keep Duke at bay.
Richardson had 23 points for Duke, the same as Hidalgo for Notre Dame. Taina Mair added 12 for Duke, Jadyn Donovan 10 points and eight rebounds.
Westbeld had 14 points and nine rebounds for Notre Dame.
Duke turned it over 21 times, shot 44 percent from the field, 30 percent from beyond the arc. Duke has won with offensive stats in that range but only with a lockdown defense and Duke’s defense allowed Notre Dame to hit 48 percent from the field, 36 percent from downtown and score 23 points off turnovers.
Kara Lawson said her team wasn’t prepared and said it was her fault.
“We gave up too many open looks, too many defensive breakdowns. They forced us to play hesitant. We kept trying to implore all of our players to play aggressive. That was a challenge for us to get anyone other than Reigan to be aggressive against the zone.”
Duke now has lost two straight for the first time since falling to South Carolina and Clemson in early December. Duke travels to Syracuse Thursday night for a game that’s trending towards must-win for Duke.
Lawson says the biggest concern for Syracuse “is how we play. Do we play with the appropriate level of effort and focus and discipline? We’ve got to get that back. We didn’t have that tonight. That’s my fault, as a coach, that we didn’t have that tonight. I’ve got to get that back on Thursday.”
“Systemic” is a polite way of describing the women’s turnover issues. Every game I’ve watched they are careless, even at times reckless, with the ball. If they could clean that part of their game up, they’d be nationally ranked and in the hunt for the ACC title.