COLLEGE STATION, Texas--Remember how mom used to scream at you to close the door on your way out the door?
It's advice the No. 16 women's basketball team should have heeded last Friday night against Texas A&M. The Blue Devils never closed the door on the game, squandering away numerous chances to take the game into their own hands, and instead ended up falling to the Lady Aggies 83-73 in the second round of the Preseason National Invitational Tournament.
"I felt like in the first half we had a chance--maybe four or five chances--to put the game out of reach," Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors said. "We'd get the lead up to eight points, and every time they just kept fighting back. We made some poor decisions, and kept allowing them to stay in the game. With a team like Texas A&M, any time you allow them to stay in the game, they are going to eventually come back and make you pay for it, and that's what they did."
Duke started the game out strongly, but quickly learned the referees would be calling touch fouls that normally might not be called. Senior Alison Day was called for her second foul just over five minutes into the game, and was replaced by freshman Payton Black.
But Black and junior Tyish Hall picked up the slack inside for the Blue Devils, as Duke took an eight point lead at 25-17 off of a Hall lay-up. Hall dominated the Lady Aggies inside, scoring 15 points in the first half on the way to tying her career high of 27 points. All 15 points were scored either in the paint or at the free-throw line.
"Hall is as good a post player as I have seen in a long time," Texas A&M head coach Candi Harvey said. "Duke did a great job of finding her and getting the ball to her."
Black was also impressive, scoring five points and hauling down a team-leading seven rebounds in the first half in 12 minutes of action, most of that in place of Day. Black finished with nine points and a game-high 13 rebounds. Goestenkors praised the efforts of her freshman post sensation, especially considering she was forced into action with Day on the bench with foul trouble.
Both teams had a sloppy first half, with Duke committing 13 turnovers to the Lady Aggies' 10. But as the two teams entered the locker room, Duke clung to a seven-point lead at 36-29.
In the second half, Duke was affected by two things--fatigue and a rejuvenated Texas A&M line-up. Harvey said her team was totally different in the first half than the second half.
"We need to make a statement against ranked teams, and I felt we did that in the second half," Harvey said. "We challenged them a little bit. We stepped up."
In the early part of the second stanza, Duke clung to its lead, but the Lady Aggies kept cutting away at the seven-point halftime deficit, pulling within one at 36-35 with just over 19 minutes to go. Duke would maintain the lead, and even increase it back to seven on a Day three-pointer with 15:42 left in the game.
Duke would never lead by that much again. The Lady Aggies went on a 16-6 run, capped by a Bambi Ferguson three-pointer at the 11:19 mark, to take their first lead of the game at 53-50. Ferguson personified Texas A&M's rejuvenated spirit as she came off the bench in the second half to score 15 points in 17 minutes of action, including 3-for-3 from beyond the three-point arc. Goestenkors said scouting reports didn't indicate the Lady Aggies were a strong shooting team. Texas A&M proved those reports wrong Friday night, going 8-for-12 on three-pointers, including 6-for-7 in the second half.
"I thought our execution in the second half was outstanding," Harvey said. "They allowed me to call some set plays, good screens were set, we got the ball to the open person we needed to get it to and we knocked down the open shot."
The one player the Blue Devils did shut down was the Lady Aggies' senior point guard Lisa Branch, who led Texas A&M in scoring last year. Branch was an uncharacteristic 0-for-8 from the field. Instead of hitting her own shots, Branch was making passes to others, as she dished out a tournament record 17 assists.
"You can't take everything away," Goestenkors said. "I think we did a great job. We had tremendous help on Lisa. Every time she went to penetrate we had great help. But she made the dish, we didn't have good rotation down and she was getting the assist. She found a way to help her team, and great players and great leaders do that."
Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, Day played a paltry 18 minutes due to constant foul trouble. The senior scored five points and collected an equal number of fouls in what Goestenkors called one of her worst performances ever.
With her presence missing from the line-up, Hall played 35 minutes and Black played 27. Two other starters, Kira Orr and Jennifer Scanlon, also had to play most of the game, with Scanlon going 37 minutes, and Orr playing the entire 40 minutes.
"We got tired," Goestenkors said. "I thought Kira Orr did a great job, but toward the end of the game, she just ran out of gas. We're not deep, and when you're not deep, you just have to be smart when you're tired. A lot of our turnovers came because of fatigue. We just didn't make good decisions with the basketball."
With the loss, the Blue Devils returned home earlier than they wanted. They now have a couple days to regroup before hitting the road again to travel to New Orleans and another tournament. Goestenkors said Duke should take a lot away from this loss, and hopefully this painful experience will help down the road.
"I think our practices will be much more intense," Goestenkors said. "Every hustle play, they owned the ball, so we need to do a better job in practice simulating that type of intensity. I think we understand when we get tired, we need to make better decisions with the basketball. And that when you have team down, you need to put them away.
"This was a great experience for us. It hurts. But hopefully in the long run, we will be a better team for it."
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