Youth will meet experience Sunday as No. 2 seed Duke travels to Nashville to take on No. 15 seed Samford in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
For the first time in three years, the Blue Devils open the NCAA tournament away from Cameron Indoor Stadium. The teams will tip off at Memorial Stadium 30 minutes after the matchup between Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee State, which begins at 5:10 p.m.
A trio of senior guards leads the Bulldogs (20-12), who were awarded a spot in the tournament after winning the Southern Conference tournament for the second straight year. The Blue Devils (24-5), on the other hand, average just 19 years of age. A lack of experience has not limited Duke though—the Blue Devils are led by sophomore point guard Chelsea Gray, who topped the ACC with 6.0 assists per game, and Elizabeth Williams, the only freshman finalist for the the John R. Wooden Award, given to the nation’s top player.
Samford, in the midst of its fifth-consecutive 20 win season, is led by senior guards Paige Anderson, Ruth Ketcham and Jazmine Powers. Anderson leads the team in scoring with 12.4 points per game, while Ketcham and Powers average 8.8 and 7.4, respectively. Ketcham also paces the team in assists and steals.
The Bulldogs only have one starting player over 6-feet though, which may pose a problem against a sizable Duke squad. The Blue Devils routinely put four players who stand 6-feet or taller on the court at the same time.
Sunday’s game will be just the third time this season that Samford has faced a ranked team—it lost to then-No. 18 DePaul in November and then-No. 8 Kentucky a month later. The Blue Devils also lost to the Wildcats during the Fall slate, but they blew out Western Kentucky—the only other regular-season opponent they share with Samford—a team the Bulldogs lost to by one point.
—from staff reports
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