By: Ben McCormick
November 4, 2024
DURHAM — In Monday morning’s season-opening 53-point win for the No. 11 Duke women’s basketball team, Radford scored just 36 points. Now that’s pretty staggering by itself. However, it gets really extraordinary when you compare it to the 34 turnovers forced by the Blue Devils.
Points: 36. Turnovers 34.
That’s what Duke head coach Kara Lawson teaches her teams to do — play lockdown defense.
“The defensive side of the ball is important in our program,” Lawson said. “We want to establish ourselves on that end as much as we can early in the game. And I thought we did that in this one.”
Duke held Radford to just nine points on 3-13 shooting in the first quarter, a feat that was impressive. But it was the second half where Duke really began to put Radford in a chokehold. The Highlanders only scored six points in each of the third and fourth quarters (and four of those points in the fourth came in garbage time during the final minute).
The only real exception to Duke’s defensive brilliance on Monday was the second quarter and the overall foul margin. Firstly, Radford outscored Duke in the second quarter 15-14, which made for a 16-point deficit at halftime. That margin made it seem a lot more respectable than it ended up being.
“And then we got a little bit undisciplined in that second quarter,” Lawson said. “And I thought we were able to get back to ourselves in that second half. So that's a great sign as a coach to see you lose it a little bit and then be able to get it back, because that's normal.”
Clearly Duke was able to bounce back and make adjustments. But one thing Duke wasn’t able to fix was fouling. It’s true that anytime you play full-court-press defense for nearly all 40 minutes, it is hard to avoid fouling. Playing tough defense means playing physical defense, and physicality often leads to whistles. But, part of playing defense is the discipline to guard without fouling.
A great example of this issue was 5-star freshman Toby Fournier, who scored 10 points in 10 minutes during her debut, but she also fouled out.
“Yeah, 10 points in 10 minutes is not bad for a debut. Five fouls in 10 minutes is,” Lawson said. “So we will try and decrease that foul count as best we can by teaching and showing the fouls because she's very productive.”
Duke committed 24 fouls in the game — two more than Radford. In Radford’s successful second quarter, one third of its points came at the line (Highlanders shot 5-9). And in the third quarter, four of their six points came from the charity strike.
Despite the fouls, this was a truly dominant defensive showing for Duke, and one in which all 10 regular rotation players defended at a high level.
“Making sure that we know what we're supposed to be doing no matter what,” sophomore Jordan Wood said when asked about the team’s defense. “Not letting our heads run around. Making sure that we're staying disciplined on every single thing, whether that's offense and defense. Just making sure that we're staying true to our scheme.”
All of this talk about defense has washed out the fact that Duke still posted 89 points and had six different Blue Devils in double figure scoring, including Wood, who scored a team-best and career-high 13 points.
Joining Wood with 10 or more points were sophomore forward Delaney Thomas (12), senior guard Reigan Richardson (11), sophomore Jadyn Donovan (10), sophomore Oluchi Okananwa (10) and Fournier (10). Overall Duke outshot the Highlanders from the field 42.9% to 23.3%. Although, the Blue Devils’ three point shooting was a bit weak — Duke hit just 4-20 attempts on the day.
One thing is abundantly clear about this year’s Duke team, i.e., it will be very similar to the past couple Duke teams by boasting the potential to be a defensive juggernaut. This team is a legitimate 10 players deep, and with so many returning contributors, expectations will be high this year in Durham.
Ben McCormick | @BenMcC33 on X / Twitter
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