Through 60 minutes of ACC play, the Blue Devils were struggling to find themselves. After shooting just 43 percent from the field and yielding 125 points to its opposition through its first game-and-a-half, Duke appeared in danger of falling to 0-2 in conference play.
With a dominant 52-point second-half performance, though, the Blue Devils picked up some confidence by the end of their win against Wake Forest Thursday night. They will need to carry momentum from those final 20 minutes into Sunday’s 1 p.m. contest against Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky.
For No. 18 Duke, this will be its second trip to the state of Kentucky in less than a month and yet another homecoming for redshirt sophomore Rebecca Greenwell. The Owensboro, Ky., native struggled in a Dec. 20 loss at then-No. 8 Kentucky, scoring just a single point in 38 minutes.
“It doesn’t matter who we’re playing, where we’re playing,” Greenwell said after Thursday’s win. “I can’t focus on that. I just need to focus on our goals as a team and the game plan.”
Duke (12-4, 1-1 in the ACC) will make a pit stop at the home of Greenwell’s aunt Saturday night for a pregame meal, and another dose of home cooking could do the trick for the 6-foot-1 guard. Against the Demon Deacons, Greenwell notched 14 points—including four 3-pointers—in the first quarter, setting program records for a single quarter in the first season since the NCAA switched from halves to quarters.
The offensive performance Thursday night was a dramatic turnaround from the Blue Devils’ first ACC contest. In their road loss to Syracuse, Duke managed a season-low 50 points, but back in Durham, the 95 points Thursday set a season high. Greenwell, sophomore Azurá Stevens, freshman Angela Salvadores and junior Oderah Chidom all finished in double-figures Thursday night and the foursome shot 10-of-18 from behind the arc.
“I think [the Syracuse game] just motivated us,” Greenwell said. “We learned from it, watched film and it was obviously hard to watch, but we just knew that we couldn’t just get down about and sulk about it. We have a long season ahead of us and a lot of tough games coming up, so we just [had] to move on.”
The loss to the Orange was Duke's third road defeat in four tries.
The Cardinals (11-5, 3-0) pose yet another challenge for the Blue Devils Sunday afternoon. Since taking over as head coach in 2007, Jeff Walz has led his Louisville team to seven NCAA tournament appearances in eight seasons—including runs to the national title game in 2009 and 2013.
The Cardinals are currently unranked, but have already taken down a pair of ranked opponents in No. 23 Michigan State Dec. 3 and No. 19 Florida State on New Year's Day.
Like Duke, Lousville boasts a pair of talented sophomore scorers in Myshia Hines-Allen and Mariya Moore. If the Blue Devils want to bottle up the Cardinals’ dynamic frontcourt duo, they will need to bring a full effort for all four quarters—something they have yet to show on the road this season.
“There was some frustration—the first half [Thursday], we scored a lot of points, but we didn’t stop anybody,” Duke head coach Joanne P. McCallie said. “So the beauty of that second half was they got both—scoring points and attacking and making stops and having fun with that, so that’s something we want to project into Sunday.”
Through 16 games, Hines-Allen and Moore are averaging 15.5 and 13.9 points per contest, respectively. They are joined in double-figures by redshirt junior guard Briahanna Jackson, who ranks 12th in scoring and fifth in steals among all ACC players.
After taking down Louisville 66-58 last season in Durham, Duke will look to improve its record to 2-0 against the Cardinals since they joined the conference. A key to Sunday’s matchup will be cutting back on the 22 turnovers that kept Louisville within reach for much of last year's tilt.
Given that Louisville trails only Syracuse in turnover margin among ACC teams, the Blue Devils will look to their freshman backcourt tandem of Salvadores and Kyra Lambert to correct the ball-handling mistakes that have plagued the team at times this year. The two combined for eight turnovers Thursday against Wake Forest, but also shot an efficient 60 percent from the field.
“We are working hard every day after the game lost in Syracuse,” Salvadores said. “So now we showed that we can defend not like the other day. Our defense was great and then we were making shots, so everything [worked well]—we had fun.”
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Twitter: @mpgladstone13
A junior from just outside Philadelphia, Mitchell is probably reminding you how the Eagles won the Super Bowl this year and that the Phillies are definitely on the rebound. Outside of The Chronicle, he majors in Economics, minors in Statistics and is working toward the PJMS certificate, in addition to playing trombone in the Duke University Marching Band. And if you're getting him a sandwich with beef and cheese outside the state of Pennsylvania, you best not call it a "Philly cheesesteak."