2024-25 DWBB - ACC Champs!

It's hard to judge a game like that with one team being so bad. When it gets into blowout territory, it's so easy for one or both teams to let their guard down. That showed in the fourth, I think, with so many turnovers when the rest of the game we'd been so solid in that category.
Toby overtook Oluchi in scoring, but both our leading scorers came off the bench. (17 and 15)
Seven for Ash, and only four for Reigan. We'll need those two stepping up on Monday.
Side note, another good offensive outing for Mair, just under double digits. Nice to see her picking up her pace lately.
 
It's a night of squeakers in the ACC. Cheaterettes barely get by middling VT 67-62, State avoids OT and wins by 2 over a bad Miami team, and Georgia Tech gets stung by a bad Clemson team 68-61. Tech can kiss the Top 25 goodbye. 😚

#23 FSU can join them in that kiss, as they lost to Louisville by a lot.
 
Section7lifer said:
The arena seems so dark. Apparently there are not rules about court lighting. I imagine it has to add a level of difficulty in shooting.
Click to expand...
The lighting is fine courtside. The arena is dark otherwise.

Just back from the game. Nice little road trip from Durham!

Loved sitting right behind the bench (not a lot of fans there, I'm pretty sure the Duke fans scattered in the 2-3 sections behind the Duke bench outnumbered the non-band Wake fans and the halftime dance group.) Got to hear things I certainly don't here in my Cameron seats upstairs across from the bench. Absolutely no words heard that Coach K might use, but the coach talk to the players on the court was interesting. Coach Tia's voice really carries across the court! Definitely heard "three" at least once when the shot clock hit ten.

Not a lot of love for the refs tonight. A couple of "she is really bad" and "they don't know what to call" (once specifically after a shot violation.) Didn't seem to miss supposed travels on us, but a lot of missed bunny hops travels on Wake.

Seeing how Oluchi went off the court in the first half, I'm surprised she came back in the second. Not surprised at her energized play. I typically say that players on breaks should drive straight to the basket unless they're cut off (or a 1 on 2) and Oluchi sure does that. The one time she did pass, she hit a cutting Tiana for an easy layup. Our break was really working in the second half. Certainly a nice adjustment at halftime.

Another adjustment was feeding Toby in the paint in the second half, as she really moved relatively easily around the bigger/slower Wake players.

Let's hope we can keep up the great defensive work on Monday, a tough assignment against a terrific Notre Dame squad.
 
Duke 72, Wake Forest 47 (recap, box score, highlights, condensed game, full replay, presser)

Duke freshman Toby Fournier and sophomore Oluchi Okananwa led a balanced scoring effort with a combined 32 points in a 72-47 road victory at Wake Forest for the 13th-ranked Blue Devils in ACC women's basketball action Thursday evening.

Fournier led all scorers with 17 points while Okananwa had 15 for Duke. Fifteen of Fournier's 17 points came in her nine second-half minutes. Okananwa added three rebounds, two assists and two steals in her 23 minutes of action. Eight different Blue Devils got on the scoreboard while sophomore Delaney Thomas led the charge on the glass with six boards. Junior Ashlon Jackson had her playmaking ability on full display en route to posting a career-high seven assists.

Defensively, Duke (20-5, 11-2 ACC) forced Wake Forest (8-16, 1-12) into 33 turnovers – the second most by a Blue Devil opponent this season. The Blue Devils scored 41 points off those miscues.

Duke WBB posted highlights and postgame comments from Kara Lawson.



Coach Lawson: "I thought it was hard for us to establish a rhythm offensively. In the first half, we were going too fast, when we should have slowed down in our half court execution. Then there were times, in the change of possession, we were going too slow when we needed to go faster. We just didn't get a feel for that until the third and fourth quarters. Our offense started to come around. Defensively, they hung tight; it's what these guys do. I'm proud of them -- that's why I told them after the game. No matter what's happening offensively, these guys battle, they continue to play hard on that end, and are able to hold teams down enough until our offense gets going.

To have our 11th win in league play, it's not lost on me. We went 11-7 a year ago, so to be 11-2 at this point in this league is a great accomplishment for them. Certainly we're not satisfied we want to try and get more wins on that side of the ledger."
 
Stats @ Wake

Here are the numbers from last night's game against the Wake Forest University Demon Deacons at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Wake Forest, NC:

OFFENSE
Possessions: 71.4 (pretty medium for us)
oRtg: 1.008 (not so hot; adj. 1.084, #42)
eFG%: 52.3% (good)
3pt%: 33.3% (OK)
2pt%: 52.9% (OK)
%three: 15.0% (very low, lowest of the season, in fact)
FT rate: 18.3% (very bad, especially considering how few threes we took)
OR%: 43.3% (good, after a couple off games)
TO%: 26.6% (very bad, not helped by a sloppy 4th quarter)
a/to: 1.105 (OK)
%assisted: 70.0% (excellent)
fast break pts: 16 (22.2%) (excellent)

DEFENSE
dRtg: 0.681 (excellent; 0.636 adj., #1 by a fair bit)
deFG%: 47.1% (OK)
3pt%: 25.0% (good)
2pt%: 52.2% (bad, very high for this team)
%threes: 34.3% (OK)
FT rate: 45.7% (terrible)
DR%: 82.4% (excellent)
TO%: 46.2% (amazing, our best of the season, and we're really good at forcing TOs)
a/to: 0.182 (amazing, third best of the entire season to Belmont and last game)
%assisted: 40.0% (very good)
stl%: 21.0% (very good)
blk%: 4.3% (very bad)
fast break pts: 4 (8.5%) (excellent)


This game was all about Duke's defensive turnovers. We forced Wake to commit 33 of them. Almost half their possessions ended with them giving us the ball. 33 opponent turnovers isn't close to making the Duke record books - in fact, it's not even our season high, which was 34 in our opener against Radford - but it's a huge number against a power conference team on their home floor, even a cellar-dwelling one. We only scored 72 points in the entire game, but 41 of them came off those turnovers. Wake only had 35 total field goal attempts in this game (and only 15 field goals made), so they literally shot the ball only two more times than they gave it away.

In fact, this is where the record book actually is in play. According to the media guide, Wake's 15 FGAs in the first half is tied for the fewest ever by a Duke opponent (Monmouth, 12/30/12), and Wake's 35 total FGAs is also tied for the fewest ever (Presbyterian, 11/17/12). In addition, Wake's 20 total rebounds is tied for 9th fewest ever by a Duke opponent, and second fewest ever to an ACC opponent (Clemson, 19, 2/6/14).

This is a really good defensive team. Now we just need to work on our offensive efficiency, and how to finish a game cleanly. We're going to need to be firing on all cylinders against Notre Dame next Monday night.
 
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