2024-25 DWBB Season

One that got away. Pretty confident things will be different if we meet in the ACC Tourney.

This loss is squarely on Reigan's shoulders. The team needs more from their senior. What is wrong with her, I figured she would easily be all-ACC this year. She has only scored in double-digits 3 times since December 1st, and had 3 points or less just as many times...and only twice had more than 3 rebounds.

She's got a bit over a month left in her college career to get it together.
 
Duke just couldn’t make critical open looks. They couldn’t defend James career high 36 points. Jordan Wood good 3 point shooter steps on the out of bounds line. Ashlon Jackson had career high 3 point shooting but missed many good shots in the 4th quarter and Fournier was inaccurate too.
Coaches stress playing the details. Duke just wasn’t finishing plays that were available.
 
NC State 89, Duke 83 (recap, box score, highlights, condensed game, full replay, presser)

Duke's Ashlon Jackson and Taina Mair combined for 44 points, but it wasn't enough as 14th-ranked NC State used a fourth-quarter comeback to down the No. 10 Blue Devils, 89-83, in ACC women's basketball action at Reynolds Coliseum Monday night.

Jackson had 23 points, including shooting 6-of-14 from behind the arc, while Mair had 21 points and five assists. Jadyn Donovan was dominant on the glass with 10 rebounds while dishing six assists. Aziaha James was the story in the game, finishing her night with 36 points to lead the Wolfpack.


ESPN has highlights, while ACC Digital Network has an Ashlon Jackson reel.



Duke WBB has Kara Lawson's press conference after the loss.


Coach Lawson: "We let [NC State] get out in transition, and they're really talented in transition... I think they had 14 transition points in the first quarter... The way to beat a good defense is don't let it get set... I thought when we got [our defense] set, we were pretty good, but we weren't able to get it set enough, and so we've got to work on that."

"[Taina Mair has] always been a good scorer. Even her freshman year in this league, she was a double figure scorer, high assists... She took a back seat at the start of the year... and now I think she's starting to see the spots within the game that she can attack and she can get open shots... I think she's been playing really well for us the last three weeks, not just scoring but, like, 5 assists, 0 turnovers. I don't know what her last month has been, but it's been lights out with her assist/turnover ratio. She's doing a great job for us, and we're going to need that. You need great point guard play if you want to be a good team, and so I think [Taina] is coming on at the right time."

"The teams are that are towards the top of the standings -- just by virtue of luck, we're all on the road against all of them, and you're only [playing] one time this year with everybody, so that's different. Normally we play over here, and then we get them back at our place, and so that's all changed now."


Which is mostly true, by the way. The ACC gave Duke a brutal conference schedule: California is the only ranked team that Duke doesn't play on the road. Notre Dame, NC State, Georgia Tech, and Florida State are all away games, and UNC is both home and away.

Pack Pride has postgame comments from NC State head coach Wes Moore and players Aziaha James and Zoe Brooks.


Coach Moore: "I have so much respect for Kara Lawson and Duke -- they're one of the best defensive teams in the country, they're unbelievable on the boards. I told her Pat Summitt would be proud of her because she's built that program the same way Pat did. But I'm proud of our kids. Got hit in the mouth, down 11 at halftime, and just kept fighting back and getting back in it and made some big plays. They ruined my speech, though. I always tell them [that if] we give up 70 points, we lose. Tonight we gave up 83 and we won, so I don't know what I'm going to say now."
 
We're 8-2 in conference, I think most of us (the reasonable ones) would have been happy with that projection in October. Worst case scenario we go 5-3 to finish out, and I think we have a better than even chance of going 7-1. I have some confidence that Reigan will pull out of her funk. Disappointing night, we won the rebounding, assist, and turnover battles, but you can't let the other team shoot 60% (and we rarely will). And yet we only lost by 6 on the #14 team's home floor. They'll learn from this, they're still a very young team with 4 of the top 7 players either freshmen or sophomores. If Reigan snaps out of it, I still think we make the Elite Eight, which means a chance at the Final Four.
 
Stats @ NC State

Here are the numbers from last night's game against the North Carolina State University Wolfpack on Kay Yow Court inside the James T. Valvano Arena at the William Neal Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, NC:

OFFENSE
Possessions: 72.1 (quite fast, especially lately)
oRtg: 1.151 (excellent; adj. 1.253, or #2, our second-best adj. rating of the year)
eFG%: 50.0% (solid)
3pt%: 45.8% (excellent)
2pt%: 41.2% (very bad, third worst of the season)
%three: 32.0% (roughly normal for us)
FT rate: 21.3% (pretty bad)
OR%: 45.8% (very good, but only a little above average for us)
TO%: 15.2% (very good)
a/to: 1.727 (outstanding)
%assisted: 59.4% (on the low side)
fast break pts: 17 (20.5%) (very good)

DEFENSE
dRtg: 1.234 (horrible; 1.023 adj., 310th in the country, bottom 15%)
deFG%: 64.4% (horrible, 10 points worse than our prior low)
3pt%: 30.8% (bad)
2pt%: 69.6% (horrible, again 10 points worse than our prior low)
%threes: 22.0% (would be good, except we couldn't stop twos)
FT rate: 35.6% (very bad)
DR%: 65.5% (bad)
TO%: 20.8% (solid)
a/to: 0.667 (good)
%assisted: 27.8% (good, except we couldn't stop them off the dribble)
stl%: 8.3% (very bad, third worst of the year)
blk%: 4.3% (terrible)
fast break pts: 36 (40.4%) (epically terrible, 13 points worse than our prior low)


Well, there's no mystery why we lost. Our defense only played one quarter of the game. Reigan Richardson played even less than that, as our best defender could manage only 9 minutes of total game time before fouling out. Reigan averages 27 minutes per game, and that average is actually held down by some early season blowouts, where she was subbed out early to give bench players some run. Granted, we should have been able to still defend at least OK, but there was Aziah James. She could not miss. She tossed in a career-high 36 points on 80%(!) shooting, most of it from drives deep into the paint, and 15 points of it in the crucial fourth quarter. And I use "tossed in" on purpose there, as it seemed anything she threw in the direction of the bucket, not matter how off-balance, went right in. She was responsible for more than 40% of NC State's offense, and we just could not stop her. Heck, you don't have to look much past the fast break numbers, honestly. We had a good game on the break, scoring 17 point and getting 20% of our scoring on the break. But NC State scored roughly double that, both in terms of points and percentage!

Jackson and Mair were terrific on our offensive end to keep us in it, and we put together one of our best offensive efforts of the season, but we we lost every quarter but the second, which is the only quarter when our defense played well. Fans love offense, but I would hold this game up as the poster child for why fans should pay more attention to the other end of the floor. There is no doubt as to why we lost this game.
 
State was on fire and was buoyed by probably the most raucous crowd we'll face all season. We had that amazing 20-0 run (or whatever it was) spanning the first two quarters but otherwise got badly outplayed. It was a really exciting, back and forth game of runs that would have been enjoyable to watch had I not been invested in the outcome. Just needed a couple stops in the end that we either didn't get or didn't finish by securing the board.
 
We need that breakthrough Grant Hill type recruit. Sarah Strong, from Sanford, NC, an hour from campus, would have been that recruit. Instead she chose to help Geno close out his career. I would argue that with her, we would be in the same position she is at with UConn this year. One loss, at most, and odds on favorites to get to a FF.
 
We need that breakthrough Grant Hill type recruit. Sarah Strong, from Sanford, NC, an hour from campus, would have been that recruit. Instead she chose to help Geno close out his career. I would argue that with her, we would be in the same position she is at with UConn this year. One loss, at most, and odds on favorites to get to a FF.
Well we did get Arianna Roberson :mad:
 
Well we did get Arianna Roberson :mad:

Is there a better emoji to express having a case of bad luck? Because that one makes you look mad at Arianna Roberson for getting injured while being a part of Team USA.

Anyway, Duke WBB posted Kara Lawson's weekly ACC media teleconference earlier today, the morning after Monday night's NCSU loss. She is about as enthusiastic as you might imagine -- at least the coaches who lost on Sunday get a day off before this obligation. The first question gets a two-word answer, and later on she puts @jimsumner on the spot, when he asks what I'm sure he thought would be a softball question about Taina Mair. She did seem to perk up toward the end, when she was asked about learning more from a loss than a win:


Coach Lawson: "I never looked at the result as the lesson. I think that's a little vain. The lessons lie in each possession. 'Hey, in this possession, I see they were trying to attack... I see my body position could be better... I didn't have the right angle on my screen...' I think if you keep it to that narrower scope [of possession] than the wide scope of result, you find you have much less turbulence emotionally through the season...

For them, daily, I want them focusing on those possessions and those details, because I believe that leads to results. I believe, over time, enough of those changes [and] growth will lead to good results. And we've had a lot of good results this year. We've had a great season so far, and so we want to continue that...

I think I would have woke up this morning with the same film package, put it that way. If we have won or lost the game, the film package to the team was going to be the same. It's not longer because we lost, because the mistakes are still the mistakes..."
 
Back
Top