GREENSBORO, N.C.—After top-seeded Duke’s 79-65 victory against No. 8 N.C. State, both teams acknowledged one fact—the ACC tournament is fun.
“You have to enjoy these games. These are challenging games,” Duke head coach Joanne P. McCallie said. “These are games that prepare you for the NCAA tournament.”
The Blue Devils closed the game on a 22-8 run, taking away a lead the Wolfpack held with seven minutes remaining. Up until that point, N.C. State was dictating the game speed and intensity behind the play of senior guard Marissa Kastanek who poured in 18 points and played a game-high 37 minutes.
“It was pretty emotional. I mean it’s my last game in the ACC tournament,” Kastanek said. “We fought hard as a team and I’m proud of all my teammates. We played really well together and we never quit, so I was proud of everybody.”
With Greensboro being less than an hour and a half from either Durham or Raleigh, 5,147 fans made the trip to watch the games. With a fairly split crowd, the second half had all the fans on its feet at times, namely a sequence featuring back-to-back 3-pointers by N.C. State’s Goodwin-Coleman and Duke’s Haley Peters with just over 10 minutes left in the contest.
The No. 8-seed Wolfpack has made a living of playing Duke hard, losing only by 10 earlier in the season and actually knocking the Blue Devils out of last year’s tournament.
“Maybe Duke can lend us some practice jerseys and we can let the other team wear those in the game,” NC State's Kellie Harper said.
For the majority of the game, both NC State’s crowd and players owned the intensity, as the Wolfpack were looking to use the tournament as their chance to make the NCAA tournament.
“Our team had an amazing mindset going into this game,” Harper said. “Not only did they believe they were going to win this game, I’ll be honest with you, they thought they were going to win the tournament.”
When it came to crunch time, Duke knew who it could count on: junior guard Tricia Liston, who finished with a game-high 26 points, carried the Blue Devils to victory with her impressive performance.
Knocking down a career-high six 3-pointers, Liston was very much the heart and soul of a Blue Devil team that seemed to lack emotion in the first half. Coming out strong in the second half, Liston followed a 14-point first half with a 12-point second half, including several momentum-swinging 3-point daggers, one of which gave Duke the lead for good.
“Tournament time is always a fun time, but it’s one game and you’re out, so we really needed to keep that in our mind and have the mentality that it’s one game at a time and you cant look past any teams here,” Liston said. “We wanted to come out today and get the win, so that’s what we did.”
Liston continued to pour on the points, scoring 10 points in the final 6:15 to propel the Blue Devils to victory.
For a 3-point specialist, Liston picked the right time to have a career-high in treys, as the Wolpack would have dominated the game if she had not been knocking down her shots and throwing the momentum back in Duke’s direction.
“You don’t hope that [Tricia Liston]’s going to miss,” Harper said. “That’s not the game plan. The game plan is to go in and take away the threes from her.”
One area in which Liston is normally quiet, rebounds, is where she stepped up today. She was able to snag 11 rebounds, 10 of them coming on the defensive glass. This allowed Duke to hold NC State to 14 second-chance points.
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