With 7:05 remaining, the Blue Devils had put themselves in a position to take down the third-ranked team in the country.
They led the No. 3 Fighting Irish by five points on their home court. They were getting key stops on defense. Duke had Notre Dame on the brink—and then it all evaporated.
What happened?
When the Fighting Irish outlasted Duke 68-61 Monday at Cameron Indoor Stadium, they relied on fifth-year senior Madison Cable to carry the team down the home stretch. The Blue Devils, being a much younger team, adopted a different strategy. Duke looked to its role players to step up and take some of the pressure off sophomore Azurá Stevens and redshirt sophomore Rebecca Greenwell. And, unsurprisingly, the Fighting Irish won out.
“Our team is working very hard,” Duke head coach Joanne P. McCallie said. “I think we need to work harder, demand more from each other. We are very hungry and not very happy because we know that we can play better. And I’ll tell you—leadership is an important concept…. We had some good step-ups today, we had some really blue-collar things working for us and that’s all part of it.”
The Blue Devils’ fourth-quarter woes began innocently enough—with a single missed jumper. But one missed shot turned into two and then three. Soon enough, Duke had gone six minutes without a made field goal and the game was slipping out of reach.
Through those final minutes, the team lacked poise. Players rushed the ball down the court and settled for a low-percentage shot instead of testing the defense. Greenwell—a relatively more time-tested leader—was a prime culprit. The Owensboro, Ky., native settled for jumpers twice during her team’s drought after lackluster ball movement failed to break up the Fighting Irish defense.
With Greenwell and the remainder of the Blue Devils drifting away from the methodical, piercing offense that had put them in position to win the game in the first place, Duke was in bad shape. However, the outcome might have been different, if the Blue Devils did not also soften up on defense.
“The reality is that you can focus on shot-making and that’s certainly part of it,” McCallie said. “But at the same time, too, we gave [up] some real easy things down the stretch. You can’t do that.”
As Duke searched for a basket, the Fighting Irish pulled ahead with Cable at the helm. The Mt. Lebanon, Pa., native posted eight points and stole the ball twice in the final period. Cable shined under pressure and showcased her leadership and experiences—Duke’s leaders just did not play with the same luster.
That is not to say there were not solid performances from the Blue Devils veterans. Graduate student Amber Henson—Duke’s own fifth-year senior—was a significant contributor against Notre Dame, posting nine points and eight rebounds. Henson provides a wealth of experience and coolness to the Duke squad that her teammates feed off, but it was not enough Monday.
“[Henson] brings just a lot of energy all around,” Stevens said. “On defense, she’s always talking and getting everyone…into what we’re doing. And on offense, she sort of just sticks to what we do, and she doesn’t ever go out of her game. She can knock down shots and also post up smaller defenders, so she does both of that, and that’s really key.”
It’s just that Henson was not able to back up her experience with the big-time plays that Cable churned out each and every time her team needed it—including a monster 3-pointer late in the fourth to give her team the lead.
The Blue Devils saw another player step up in freshman point guard Kyra Lambert. After going scoreless in the first half, Lambert notched 10 points in the second half and drained some timely baskets in the closing minutes to keep hope alive in the Duke faithful.
But Lambert’s contributions came too late to be meaningful. The Cibolo, Texas, native showed fight and brought the kind of intangibles to the court that a team needs to battle back from a late deficit, but there was no time left on the clock for the momentum to swing back the Blue Devils' way.
“[Lambert] did a great job of attacking down the stretch and really providing [a spark],” McCallie said. “I think she’s onto the kind of leadership that it takes from the point position. Her challenge is to play consistently through that, but I thought she did a great job, and she gave us some good hope down the stretch there to finish the way we wanted to.”
Duke played well against a top-five team Monday, finding an answer for just about every scheme that Notre Dame could throw its way. But beyond the X’s-and-O’s, the Blue Devils struggled to compensate for their youth, and eventually succumbed to a team dripping with veteran leadership.
The good news is that experience is always developing, and in a few years Duke might find itself on the opposite side of this story.
“[The younger players] are getting better every game,” Greenwell said. “I thought Kyra in the second half really came along and hit some big shots for us, and it really just helps take pressure off of everybody else, but I think she’s doing a great job and will continue to do that.”
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