The women's basketball team missed out on a chance to measure its progress Monday night.
Or maybe it learned just how far it had to go.
The Blue Devils were soundly beaten by Tungsram of Hungary, 69-58, in Duke's second and final exhibition game of the season at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The game saw Tungsram grab an 18-point lead with 2:43 remaining in the first half, and the Blue Devils were able to narrow the margin to single digits only once after that point.
Losing to Tungsram is not in itself a great cause for alarm. The Hungarian team is a veteran squad that has been playing together for several years. What had Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors concerned, though, was the apparent lack of intensity shown by the Blue Devils during the contest.
"The last two minutes we played with the intensity that I want and need them to play with for 40 minutes," Goestenkors said. "I am a little upset because I feel like we didn't play hard."
Duke led only once during the game. A layup by freshman Kira Orr put Duke ahead 13-12 with 11:49 to play in the first half. Tungsram then overwhelmed the Blue Devils with a 19-2 run over the next seven minutes, giving the Hungarian team a commanding 31-15 lead.
At this point, the game was basically over. The Blue Devils did manage to score the final nine points of the first half to trim the Tungsram lead to nine points, 36-27. But the Hungarians netted the first seven points of the second half to rebuild the spread to 16, and the Blue Devils had to score the last seven points of the game just to cut the final margin to 11.
Duke had great difficulty stopping the Tungsram offense throughout the contest. The Hungarians moved the ball down the court quickly against the Duke defense, easily breaking through any token pressure that the Blue Devils could apply.
"Our defense was atrocious," Goestenkors said. "Hungary is such a tremendous passing team and they hit the open shot, so if your defense is not on its toes and ready to play, they are going to take advantage of you. And that's exactly what happened."
The result was a good shooting night for the Hungarians (32-of-64 for 50 percent), with Anita Ratvay leading the way, making 10 of her 16 shots to finish the night with 20 points. Eva Sztojkovicx added 14 points on seven of 15 shooting and also snatched 10 rebounds.
Meanwhile, the Blue Devils struggled from the field, making only 24 of their 62 shots. Sophomore Jen Scanlon led Duke with 13 points. No other Blue Devil managed to reach double figures.
Goestenkors blamed the ineffectiveness of the Duke offense on a confusing defensive tactic employed by Tungsram that the young Blue Devil squad had not prepared for during the preseason. The Hungarians switched who they were guarding on every pick set by the Duke offense.
Senior point guard Missy Anderson agreed that Tungsram's defense was difficult to adapt to, but felt the Blue Devils did gain needed experience.
"We've practiced guard-guard switches and post-post switches, but we were not used to guard-post switches," Anderson said. "We learned the hard way. I think North Carolina does that, so we are going to have to get used to it."
Anderson was the one player that Goestenkors felt played hard for the entire game. The statistics bear that out -- the 5-8 Anderson scored seven points and led the team in both steals and rebounds, amassing four and six, respectively.
Anderson felt that Duke learned a valuable lesson about intensity from the disappointing loss.
"We did pick up the intensity during the last two minutes," Anderson said. "If we'd have played the whole game like that, it would have been a different outcome. We know now that we have to play with that kind of intensity if we want to be competitive in the ACC."
NOTE: The Duke women officially open their 1993-94 season this Friday night in Cameron Indoor Stadium against Morgan State at 7 p.m.
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