No. 14 Duke women's basketball showcases depth in key situations against No. 18 Georgia Tech
Good teams have to know how to be tested.
In the weeks leading up to the postseason, the best teams come out better after being pushed. Georgia Tech forced Duke to adapt at every turn Sunday afternoon on a slow night for the Blue Devils’ top scorers, giving them Devils a tough assessment. But in the closing minutes, Kara Lawson’s squad passed.
Duke walked out of McCamish Pavilion with a tenacious 55-50 road win. Its defense, along with outstanding performances by role players Oluchi Okananwa and Delaney Thomas, delivered in the fourth quarter to pull the Blue Devils out with a win.
On a day where Toby Fournier, Reigan Richardson and Ashlon Jackson — Duke’s three highest scorers on the season — all scored in single digits, the supporting cast stepped up to the plate. Okananwa, playing with the firecracker style that characterizes her game, entered the game late in the first quarter and spurred the offense. After the Blue Devils fell behind by six in the opening minutes, the sophomore guard found Taina Mair beyond the arc and then laid it in herself to help set off an 11-point run that gave the Blue Devils their first lead in the contest.
“I entered with the same mindset I always do whenever I come into the game, which is, ‘How can I help my team? And most importantly, can I bring my motor?’” Okananwa said.
Okananwa would later power the offense when the shots weren’t falling in the fourth, breaking the tie for the final time in the closing minutes with a layup followed by a jump shot to give Duke back a four-point lead. The sophomore capped off the run with an acrobatic lay-in with 4:02 remaining, allowing the Blue Devils the space to let the defense hold the line. She finished with 12 points on 5-of-11 from the field.
“Oluchi was key in the fourth quarter for us. Made three straight baskets when we were just really in need of someone stepping up to make a play, and she stepped up on those three possessions and gave us enough separation,” Lawson said.
While the Blue Devils’ offense is far from consistent, both from possession to possession and between matchups, there is comfort in the fact that Duke is deep. The Boston native was the evident spark in the offensive runs for the Blue Devils, but Mair and Thomas both matched her performance on the stat sheet with 12 points a piece. Georgia Tech may have had answers for Duke’s first lines of attack, but it couldn’t handle the second.
Even as the offense faltered, the Duke defense astonished everyone in the building. Okananwa’s burst was complemented by a nearly five-minute stretch where the Yellow Jackets did not score at the end of the contest. From the 5:13 mark, Georgia Tech did not score on a field goal and would finish the fourth quarter with just five points to show for it.
“Duke is probably the best defensive team in the country. They absolutely played phenomenal defense, and they did exactly what they needed to do to beat us. They shut down the people they needed to shut down,” Georgia Tech head coach Nell Fortner said.
With every run that the Yellow Jackets made, Duke had an answer. Thomas was the lifeline when Georgia Tech made a push at the start of the second half, hitting two crucial jump shots in the early minutes to keep the Blue Devils even with the home team. The Duke defense forced a shot clock violation on the following possession and Thomas scored off of an offensive rebound to restore the Blue Devil lead. The sophomore then squared up in the paint against Kayla Blackshear on the other end and snagged a board to finish off a tenacious set.
Duke continued to hone its strengths Sunday, earning a critical road win and strengthening its grip on a top seed in the ACC Tournament. With just over a month left in the conference season, the Blue Devils are emerging battle-tested and ready to be great.
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