2024-25 DWBB Season

Shout out to the folks in Cameron today, the crowd on both levels looks great!
I know there have been many complaints about the band, dance team, and DJ being moved into section 17. Having attended my first game since the transition earlier this season, I understand why - you can't see one side of the court unless you stand up, and they are loud. But in terms of seeing the crowd on TV, and informally gaging the level of fan excitement compared to previous years, I like it.
 
I know there have been many complaints about the band, dance team, and DJ being moved into section 17. Having attended my first game since the transition earlier this season, I understand why - you can't see one side of the court unless you stand up, and they are loud. But in terms of seeing the crowd on TV, and informally gaging the level of fan excitement compared to previous years, I like it.
So what was the big "Fan Experience" for the endzones? I see they're open, but I only see fans as I'd normally expect.
 
So what was the big "Fan Experience" for the endzones? I see they're open, but I only see fans as I'd normally expect.
Nothing, yet. I don’t see how anyone’s fan experience got better with the band move. When the students do come, is it better to have them all in 1 end zone, which is where they opt to sit, rather than on either side of the band? I don’t think so.
 
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Duke 74, Stanford 49 (recap, box score, highlights, condensed game, full replay, presser)

Sixteenth-ranked Duke outscored Stanford 25-7 in the second quarter and never looked back en route to a 74-49 win over the Cardinal in ACC women's basketball action Sunday afternoon inside Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Blue Devil junior Taina Mair turned in a stellar all-around performance with 13 points, six assists, five rebounds and zero turnovers while Ashlon Jackson led all scorers with 16 points. Delaney Thomas recorded her second career double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds. The sophomore knocked down 5-of-6 from the floor and 2-of-2 from the charity stripe.

Duke remains unbeaten at home (9-0) and moves to 15-4 overall on the season. The 6-1 conference mark puts the Blue Devils in a tie for second place in the league.


ACC Digital Network highlights are linked above; Duke WBB highlights are embedded below.


Coach Lawson offers her comments on the game; GoDuke has posted some quotes.


"It was a solid performance for us today. You know, for us to finish this week with two really good teams coming into Cameron, both Cal and Stanford, and to get wins in both of those games is great for us as we try to keep collecting as many wins as possible. I thought, in the first half, we were really dominant defensively, and kind of sparked ourselves to a pretty big lead. The third quarter got a little muddy. We started getting undisciplined. We started fouling. They were able to beat us in that quarter. But then we regrouped in the fourth and were able to win that one. We continue to play and defend at a really high level, and just proud of them for putting back-to-back performances in this week together to come away with a win."

"Delaney [Thomas] and Toby [Fournier] drew the assignment of number 3 [Nunu Agara], and obviously she's a load in there. She's a very talented player, very physical and can finish either way. I thought they did a good job of just making her shots tough, and that's really all you can do - make the shots tough and hope that she misses some of them. So, I thought that they set that tone from the beginning. I thought Delaney was really physical and just sound in what we were doing, and she had a double-double as well. Our defense overall, our paint defense, our perimeter defense, it's played really well these last two weeks. You know, I don't know the numbers and how they rank relative to everybody else, I just know what my eyes see. We're playing defense at a really high level, and it's fun to watch."


Finally, a We Back Pat conversation between Duke coaches and former Tennessee teammates Kara Lawson and Kyra Elzy:

 
The three way tie for second place is now a two way tie. Louisville loses to VT, leaving just Duke and the Wuffettes with one conference loss.
 
But we are somehow on the bubble according to Joey Brackets to host in the NCAAAs? That's top 16...

Right, Duke was #16 in both the AP and Coaches Polls this week, but should move up a few spots on Monday.

"Charlie Brackets" for this thread. Charlie Creme is in charge of Women's Bracketology for ESPN.

I was about to disagree about moving up in the rankings because, at the time Duke won earlier today, no one ranked ahead of them had lost this week. That's since changed, with #9 Ohio State, #13 Oklahoma, and #15 Tennessee all losing this afternoon.

Duke will move up to at least #14. I'm mentally preparing myself for a 1-loss Ohio State team to stay ahead of a 4-loss Duke team, even though the voters know Ohio State is largely untested, and that's still the case -- they lost to a Penn State team that was 9-9 and 0-7 in the Big Ten. The Buckeyes should fall 10 spots for that, minimum, but I'm predicting I'll be a little disappointed.

Anyway, it soon becomes moot. Ohio State could lose 5 of their next 6 games:

vs #8 Maryland
at Nebraska
vs Washington
@ #1 UCLA
@ #4 USC
vs #24 Minnesota
 
The vibe of this game was a little weird. Oftentimes frustrating (3pt shot selection!??). Good outcome though. Nice defensive win over a rebuilding team.

Also, Debbie antonelli was cracking me up with her call. She seemed to be taking personal offense that their big wasn't trying to score in the first half 😂. I really liked her observation about Okanawa too: if she learns how to change speeds effectively on offense, it would take her game to a whole other level. I think that's spot on and I'm here for it! I love watching her play!
 
The vibe of this game was a little weird. Oftentimes frustrating (3pt shot selection!??). Good outcome though. Nice defensive win over a rebuilding team.

Also, Debbie antonelli was cracking me up with her call. She seemed to be taking personal offense that their big wasn't trying to score in the first half 😂. I really liked her observation about Okanawa too: if she learns how to change speeds effectively on offense, it would take her game to a whole other level. I think that's spot on and I'm here for it! I love watching her play!
It appears that one of Lawson's strategies is to attack before the defense gets set, so we see a lot of forced fast breaks off defensive rebounds and even made baskets. Okananwa and Jackson really push the ball, sometimes without a numbers advantage. The success rate has been improving so the decision making and shot selection have improved.

Okananwa can be like a runaway freight train. I saw the interview where each of the ladies described a sport they might play if it were not for basketball... Okananwa said Gymnastics, which she would have pursued had she not grown so tall. She certainly does make some acrobatic moves and is fearless under the basket going for rebounds. I would expect her to continue improving in areas like pace and decision making. Fun to watch, no doubt.
 
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Stats v. Stanford

Here are the numbers from last night's game against the Stanford University Cardinal at Cameron Indoor:

OFFENSE
Possessions: 69.5 (average)
oRtg: 1.066 (just OK; adj. 1.101, T33rd)
eFG%: 49.2% (fairly weak)
3pt%: 29.4% (still bad, fourth game in row below 30%)
2pt%: 51.1% (solid)
%three: 26.6% (back to our usual low selves)
FT rate: 21.9% (pretty bad)
OR%: 29.4% (very bad, 2nd lowest this season)
TO%: 13.0% (very good, 2nd best of the season)
a/to: 1.444 (very good, 2nd best of the season)
%assisted: 44.8% (bad)
fast break pts: 20 (27.0%) (outstanding, best of the season)

DEFENSE
dRtg: 0.706 (still amazing; 0.531 adj., #1 in our 5th out of 6 games in 2025)
deFG%: 36.4% (excellent)
3pt%: 44.4% (bad)
2pt%: 30.4% (outstanding, only the Radford game was better)
%threes: 16.4% (excellent; they hit their open ones, but they didn't get many tries)
FT rate: 23.6% (OK)
DR%: 72.5% (OK)
TO%: 28.8% (good)
a/to: 0.250 (excellent)
%assisted: 27.8% (excellent, best of the season)
stl%: 14.4% (OK, a bit low for us)
blk%: 19.6% (very good)
fast break pts: 3 (6.1%) (excellent)


Our defense continues to amaze this calendar year. Our outlier was against Virginia, where we were "only" the equivalent of the 15th best defense in the country. Every other game in 2025 we've been #1, and in most of them, by a huge margin. The nerd rankings are just starting to get that message, as we are ranked 8th defensively by Torvik and 7th by Her Hoop Stats, but we've clearly been the top team in January. We didn't really have any defensive weaknesses yesterday. Stanford may have hit a high percentage of threes against us, but they normally score more than a third of their points from beyond the arc, and yesterday it was just 25%, and we made them brutally inefficient from closer in.

Offensively, this was only an OK game. We didn't shoot well from three again, and we didn't take all that many threes, either. As a team, we get less than 25% of our points from three, and it was even lower (20.3%) in this game. We tend to get our points from the interior and drawing fouls, but we didn't do all that well at the drawing fouls part yesterday. We also didn't share the ball particularly well yesterday, assisting on less than half our field goals, but our A/TO was still good because we had one of out best games holding onto the ball. We also ran them into oblivion. Our fast break was just devastating. We sped them up on our offensive end, and we slowed them down on theirs. Good combo.

I also thought the crowd was excellent for this game. It was a points game for tenting, so that explains the students, but there were fewer than came on Thursday, likely partly because they aren't big fans of being stuck on the end line. But there were more than usual in Section 19 and above the rail, as well. I'm hopeful that the bandwagon crowd is finally starting to hitch a ride.
 
Duke will move up to at least #14. I'm mentally preparing myself for a 1-loss Ohio State team to stay ahead of a 4-loss Duke team, even though the voters know Ohio State is largely untested, and that's still the case -- they lost to a Penn State team that was 9-9 and 0-7 in the Big Ten. The Buckeyes should fall 10 spots for that, minimum, but I'm predicting I'll be a little disappointed.

Yep. In Week 12 of the AP Poll, Ohio State fell only 3 places to #12.

1. UCLA
2. South Carolina
3. Notre Dame
4. USC
5. LSU
6. Connecticut
7. Texas
8. Maryland
9. TCU
10. Kansas State

13. UNC
14. Duke
18. Georgia Tech
20. NC State
22. California
 
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