The #14 Ladies travel to Durham, North Carolina today to play at Duke. The game is on the ACC Network at 8PM. Duke is 11-5, 3-2 in the ACC coming off road wins at LOLUVA and Georgia Tech. Their losses are to #8 Stanford, #13 Louisville, #1 South Carloina, Clemson and Davidson.
Duke is a young team; they start a freshman, two sophomores, a junior and a senior. The senior, 6'6" 42 Brown, the junior, 5'11" #24 Richardson, and sophomore, 5'9" #22 Mair are transfers. Nine players play at least 15 min/game. The four subs are two freshmen, a sophomore and a grad student.
Duke will play with 4 guards and a forward/center on the court much of the time; but they will have two forwards in the lineup some of the time. Interestingly, their leading scorer, #5 freshman Okananwa, who averages 11.3 ppg, does not start; she comes off the bench for 21 min/game. Two starters average double digit scoring and a third averages 9.8 ppg.
Their tallest player, Brown, averages 2.7 fouls per game; so she may have trouble staying on the court. Three other players, including the leading scorer, average 2.3 to 2.6 fouls per game. Duke may play so many players because they have to in order to spread out the fouls.
Duke has 7 players shooting better than 30% from beyond the arc, including two better than 40%. Their leading scorer, freshman super sub Okananwa, shoots 51.2% overall, 42.5% from three, 80% on free throws and leads the team in rebounding with 6.4. She probably will be the player who dominates the game for Duke; we need to stop the rest of the team if we are going to win this game.
Duke averages 3 more TO's than assists per game. They win rebounds by 4.6; make 6.3 threes and allow 5.4. Their opponents have shot 280 free throws to their 235. We may win this game on free throws if we don't win on the court. Although there is a good chance if we shoot that many free throws, we will win on the court because they won't have their preferred players on the court. Especially if Brown spends a lot of time on the bench, Kitley should have a very good evening. Let's hope Georgia and Kayla can find their shot tonight.
Winning on the road in the ACC is always difficult, especially if the refs are incompetent; but the Hokies should prevail at Duke tonight.
LET'S GO HOKIES!
Comments
LET'S GOOOOO!!!
also:
HOKIES!
Ladies already having fun at Duke
I wish Kitley would take a couple more threes during games. There are at least 1-2 times during the game when the opponent leaves her wide open out there.
I believe at the end you can hear brooks yelling "I swear to God if you two injure yourselves doing a chest bump..."
Worth it.
Duke girl didn't even bother jumping against Kitley on the tip.
Kayla King with the shot clock beater then recovers to defend pass. Pretty awesome combo
The ladies are off to a good start. Glad to see King getting involved early...
Duke player was in the cylinder on that Amoore foul
Ladies doing their usual sleep walk in a quarter.
This team misses Traylor so much. No ball handler outside of Georgia.
They need to run every play through Kitley in the second half. Get that girl her triple double. She's well over due.
Ladies still sleepwalking while Duke physically knocks them around
Ladies must have got the men's Gatorade....13 turnovers and only in the third quarter
Women have equaled the men with 15 minutes to go
I'm not gonna say this game changed with Amoore out, but it didn't help.
Good to see Brooks giving the refs what they need to hear
That game was probably the most animated I have seen Brooks. We were getting shoved all over the place just like last year at Duke.
Wenzal is a turnover machine right now.
Just not our night. Hope Amoor is ok long term
I don't even know where to start about this game. All down hill since the 2nd qtr. started. Complete lack of intensity/aggressiveness on D. Duke is following the FSU game plan of just driving the lane. We are just standing there w our feet in cement as they blow by.
Well that sucked
Not sure why Kenny didn't switch up to the zone defense. Kept giving them straight shots to the basket all night.
Guess they used up their shooting and enthusiasm the night before
Ugly night in Durham. Very good Hokie contingent in Cameron but little enthusiasm from the Hokies on the court in the 3rd period. Duke clearly wanted it more. Wenzel was playing way timid, you could see it in her eyes.
That might have been the ugliest half of bball I can recall watching.
Has there been any indication of Amoore's injury? It's almost like they lost focus on the game after that happened.
Just read that she was elbowed in the head. Concussion? Dunno yet.
Edit: Meant to reply to HokieAddict
She was definitely elbowed in the head. No call of course. Even after they went back to see what had happened. It appeared the Duke player realized she could get a free shot in and took it.
Hey, playing at Duke is always trouble for Hokies. I hate them in a different way than I hate loluva, but darned near as much. Men and women, fans and coaches.
Looked like an axial load/extension combo injury.
Her head was already somewhat leaned back before the elbow came in and pushed back/down on her spinal column.