When the women's basketball team trailed N.C. State by eight with 1:24 left in Wednesday night's game, it looked very much like a Wolfpack win in the making. When Duke fell behind by six with 44 seconds to go, it looked very much like an inevitable notch in the Blue Devil's loss column. And when the deficit was five with 0:22.1 remaining, it looked like this contest was over.
But when Duke senior guard Kira Orr's fallaway three-pointer with 2.1 seconds left in regulation swished through the net at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the game was sent into overtime, and suddenly it looked like a thrilling come-from-behind victory for the Blue Devils. And it would be, but just barely, as No. 18 Duke (17-6 overall, 9-4 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) held on in the extra period and won its sixth straight game, 96-95.
"It was an unbelievable game," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "N.C. State deserves all the credit in the world. They played much better than us for the majority of the game... I'm very, very proud of my team for the way we fought back. They never gave up. We always thought that we were going to win and that's half the battle. Down the stretch everybody contributed, made big shots or key plays, whether it was offensively or defensively."
With the crowd of 1,257 on its feet, Duke scored the first six points of overtime, taking a 92-86 lead with 3:11 remaining on a driving layup by sophomore Hilary Howard, who notched a career-high 22 points. The Wolfpack (15-10, 5-7) refused to go away, though, and Umeki Webb's trey with 16 seconds to go pulled it within one. N.C. State then fouled Howard, who missed the front end of a one-and-one. Nazrawit Medhanie fouled Katie Smrcka-Duffy on the rebound, sending the Wolfpack guard to the free throw line with 11 seconds left and a chance to win the game.
But Smrcka-Duffy missed the front end of her one-and-one, and Howard grabbed the rebound and got the ball to Orr, who weaved away from N.C. State defenders until the final buzzer sounded and her teammates stormed the floor.
"We came back into the huddle before overtime and you could just see everyone's spirits were up and you could see it in everyone's faces," Orr, who poured in a career-high 32 points, said. "We weren't going to blow this game in our house."
Based on the their play in the first half, however, an exhilarating victory for the Blue Devils seemed unlikely. After a back-and-forth battle, including 10 ties, over the first 15 minutes of the game, the Wolfpack went on a 12-2 run over the final 4:04 of the first half to take a 40-31 lead into the locker room. While Goestenkors has settled on a seven or eight-man rotation over recent games, she used 11 players in the first half.
"In the first half I was trying to find somebody who wanted to play, and I went through 11 people and I couldn't really find anybody," Goestenkors said. "Then in the second half I found some people who really wanted to play."
The two teams traded baskets early in the second half until an Orr jumper brought Duke within three, at 56-53, with 12:08 to play. The Blue Devils could pull no closer, though, and N.C. State increased its lead to 10, 71-61, at the 5:21 mark on a Chastity Melvin lay-in.
The Wolfpack center killed Duke inside all night, totaling a career-high 33 points on 14-of-20 shooting. The Blue Devils' twin towers of Tye Hall and Payton Black, meanwhile, were struggling. Hall, who was averaging a team-leading 17.8 points coming in, scored 14 but was limited to 26 minutes due to foul trouble. Black, whose 15.7 per game was third-best for Duke, also managed 14 points on a frustrating 5-of-18.
"They did a good job of going into Chastity," Goestenkors said. "We just could not stop her."
But it was their perimeter players who saved the day for the Blue Devils. With 1:24 remaining in regulation, Hall fouled out as Melvin converted a three-point play to extend the N.C. State advantage to eight. From that point on, the Blue Devils went on a 16-8 run to close out regulation, with Orr, Howard and freshman forward Peppi Browne scoring all of Duke's points. Orr's putback of Browne's missed trey with 9.1 seconds to go pulled Duke within three, and the Blue Devils' tenacious defense forced a five-second violation by the Wolfpack on the ensuing inbounds, setting up Orr's heroics.
"Our defense tightened up and we got that key five-second call," Howard said. "We just came together and looked each other in the eyes and knew this was a game we really needed to win."
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