The Duke women held Virginia Tech’s two-time ACC Player of the Year Elizabeth Kitley to eight points and All-ACC player Taylor Soule to four, was plus 11 in turnovers, attempted 13 more field goals and four more foul shots than the Hokies in Saturday’s ACC Tournament semifinal match.
Sound like a winning recipe? Well, only if some of those shots actually go in the basket.
There’s the rub. Duke shot 27% from the field, 60% from the line and missed 14 of 15 3-point shots against a scorching Tech team that exploited every Duke mistake in a decisive 17-0 run that ended the first half.
Duke had four assists. Four assists for the entire game. Part of that was a dysfunctional offense, part of that was the simple reality that you can’t get an assist unless somebody at the other end makes a shot.
The result was a 58-37 Virginia Tech win. The Hokies advance to Sunday’s ACC Tournament title game against Louisville, while Duke goes home with a check list that hopefully includes figuring out how to fix an anemic offense that has scored 41, 44 and 37 points in its last three games.
There were some promising data points early for Duke. Duke led 4-2 when Soule picked up her second foul only 2:10 into the game.
Duke was totally unable to exploit her absence. D’asia Gregg came off the bench and gave Tech a solid seven points and seven rebounds.
The first quarter ended with VT up 13-9. Duke scored the first four points of the second period to draw even, allowed a pair of 3s and clawed back to 19-18 on an Elizabeth Balogun 3-pointer and a pull-up jumper by Celeste Taylor.
And then it slipped away, then fell apart completely, one agonizing possession after another.
“We just were not disciplined in our scheme,” Kara Lawson said. “We gave them clean looks at 3s, which was not the game plan and they made us pay. Just losing people, not having an awareness, not being in air space when they catch it. They’re too good to give them those shots that are open. We dug ourselves quiet a hole there at the half because of not being disciplined guarding the 3.”
Georgia Amoore looked like an All-American against Duke. She hit a 3-pointer to put Tech up 9-6, another for 19-13, another for 27-18, another for 32-18. Cayla King, Gregg and King again also knocked down triples for the Hokies in the opening half.
On the other end of the court Tech’s defense “was very disciplined in their scheme,” according to Lawson. “We didn’t do a good job of moving the ball and got into some isolation stuff and they did a good job of challenging those shots.”
Duke missed its last eight shots of the half, with three turnovers tacked on for good measure.
The halftime score was 36-18.
Kitley said that she doesn’t look at the score much during a game but “we could definitely feel that we had momentum and we were trying to translate that from defense to offense.”
Duke’s defense gave the team some chances to put some game pressure on Tech in the second half given some offensive production. But that was a pipe dream. Tech scored two points in the first 5:58 of the third but Duke could only score six. The Devils got to 36-24 and had the ball in transition. But an out-of-control Reigan Richardson was called for a charge and Tech closed the period on a 12-6 run.
Virginia Tech didn’t score for the first five minutes of the fourth period but the closest Duke could get was 14 at 50-36 and Duke could notch only a single foul shot after that.
Amoore was the game’s only double-figure scorer, with 24 points, 6-8 on 3s, playing all 40 minutes.
“She put us over the edge,” Tech’s Kenny Brooks said.
Tech ended 9-17 from beyond the arc. They turned it over 20 times to Duke’s nine but bludgeoned Duke on the glass, 41-22, with Kitley grabbing 11 boards.
Balogun had nine points for Duke, Brown eight. Taya Corosdale led Duke with five rebounds. Duke had nine offensive rebounds but got only two points out of that. Brown (4-7) was the only Duke player to make at least half of her field-goal attempts.
Back to the drawing board?
“We’ll use these two weeks to just getting better,” Lawson said.
Virginia Tech is one of the hottest teams in the country and Duke still should host as a three seed. But to get into the second weekend in my opinion a sizeable chunk of “getting better” has to devoted to putting the ball in the basket. There are only so many 44-40 games you can win in March.