WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.—Duke will finish its regular season without beating a ranked team, but until Sunday afternoon, the Blue Devils had not lost to a team below them in the ACC standings.
They cannot claim that luxury anymore.
In a game of runs and wild momentum swings, Wake Forest used an 11-3 run early in the fourth quarter to pull away from Duke for a 64-58 victory at Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum and snap a 44-game losing streak against the Blue Devils. Sophomore Amber Campbell scored a career-high 27 points—including five straight spanning the third and fourth quarters—and freshman Ariel Stephenson gave the Demon Deacons the lead for good with a 3-pointer with 8:23 remaining.
The loss was the Blue Devils’ third straight and drops them below .500 in conference play, putting their NCAA tournament hopes in jeopardy with just three games left in the regular season.
“It’s a game of runs, and the key is keeping your run. When you come out and we drop those points and tie it up or go ahead, you keep the ball and you keep those runs going,” Duke head coach Joanne P. McCallie said. “I loved the way we came out in the game and also I loved the way we came out after halftime. I thought we did a wonderful job there. We just didn’t keep our consistency.”
Duke (17-10, 6-7 in the ACC) had numerous chances to stop the bleeding, but missed three straight free throws early in the final frame, and after junior Oderah Chidom trimmed the deficit to five with a 3-point play, Stephenson responded with another 3-pointer from the corner to stretch the lead back to eight.
Chidom was a consistent presence down the stretch after missing most of the first half with foul trouble, and she finished with 18 points—tying a career-high—and six boards.
The 6-foot-4 forward trimmed the deficit to 54-50 with a pair of free throws with two minutes remaining, but once again, Stephenson came right back with a midrange jumper. A possession later, Campbell put the nail in the coffin with a driving layup through contact, and Wake Forest (15-11, 6-7) iced the game with free throws.
“We just didn’t do a good job with one-on-one stops. We let her penetrate into the gaps and get in there,” redshirt sophomore Rebecca Greenwell said. “Our help-side [defense] could have been better also, but she was just really good.”
After stumbling to an 11-point halftime deficit, Duke was energized coming out of the locker room and opened the second half on a 16-2 run, taking the lead on a 3-pointer by Greenwell after the Blue Devils forced a turnover with a full-court press.
The Owensboro, Ky., native scored just three points in the first half, but was more active after the break and finished with 11 points. Greenwell and Chidom combined for 14 of the team’s 16 points in the third quarter.
Duke suffered through two separate droughts of at least five minutes without a point in the first half, shooting just 8-of-28 from the field before the break. The Blue Devil offense remained disjointed while sophomore Azurá Stevens remained sidelined with a torn plantar fascia for a fourth straight game, failing to reach 60 points for the third consecutive contest without its leading scorer.
McCallie’s bench was made even thinner because redshirt freshman Lyneé Belton did not travel with the team due to a hyperextended knee.
After senior Ataijah Taylor scored the first points in the game with an easy layup for Wake Forest, Duke rattled off 11 straight points while holding the Demon Deacons scoreless for a 4:40 span in the first quarter to build an early lead.
The advantage evaporated by the end of the first frame, though, with Elisa Penna knocking down two 3-pointers to help the Demon Deacons score the last 13 points of the quarter.
“[Runs are] a big part of it at this point in time, especially in conference games where everyone knows each other quite well,” McCallie said. “It’s important to have the ball, so that’s what you try to with those runs.”
Foul trouble plagued the Blue Devils much like it did Thursday night against No. 10 Florida State, with five players picking up two fouls before halftime. Freshman Angela Salvadores had a strong first half with seven points, but committed two fouls in quick succession and went to the bench with 3:29 left in the first half. The Leon, Spain, native scored six of her team’s final eight points—she finished with 16 overall—but it was too little, too late.
“The foul trouble was a problem. They were not good fouls,” McCallie said. “I just think that anybody playing the game needs to keep themselves eligible to play. Foul trouble should not be happening—it should be something that is rare and not frequent. Then, of course, you’ve got your full complement of people you can play at any given time, so we need to work on that.”
Duke had to patch together a lineup to finish the half featuring role players Mercedes Riggs, Faith Suggs and Erin Mathias on the court at the same time, and Wake Forest took advantage with five straight points before McCallie relented and inserted Salvadores back into the game. The substitution did not stem the tide, though, and the Demon Deacons rode a 15-1 run to take a 33-22 lead into the locker room.
Saddled with their first three-game losing streak of the season, the Blue Devils will head to Blacksburg, Va., to take on Virginia Tech Thursday.
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