With 9:20 left in the game, and Duke down by seven points, things were looking bleak for the women's basketball team. Maryland had dominated the game defensively, and a comeback seemed unlikely. With no one else stepping forward, Duke cried to its captains for help.
Senior co-captains Tye Hall and Kira Orr answered their teammates' call by sparking the Blue Devils on a seven-minute, 14-0 run, which led to a 66-57 win. The duo combined to score 15 of Duke's final 23 points, with Hall scoring 20 points despite missing the first eight minutes of the game. Illness kept Hall out of the starting lineup, but it couldn't slow her play.
"She had a great game today, a great game," Maryland coach Chris Weller said. "She ran the court very well. She was allowed to roam in there a bit too much."
The key to the second-half comeback, however, was not improved offensive play. Duke's performance in the second half lent credence to the cliched notion that defense wins championships.
In the first half, Maryland dominated the game in rebounding and on the scoreboard. By grabbing ten more rebounds than the Blue Devils in the first half, including five more on the offensive end, the Terrapins built a lead as large as nine points.
"I thought they really outworked us and outhustled us in the first half," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "I was very disappointed with our effort, especially on the boards. We've been working on our rebounding, and it did not show in the first half. They dominated us on the boards and got a lot of second-chance points."
Although the Blue Devils trimmed Maryland's lead to three by the end of the half and tied the game six minutes into the second half, the Terrapins regained control of the game and had a lead of seven with 9:20 remaining. That's when Duke woke up defensively and Maryland went cold.
After Duke's defensive reawakening, the Terrapins went seven minutes without scoring a single point. During this stretch, Maryland could do no right and Duke could do no wrong. While the Terrapins couldn't buy a bucket, missing eight shots in a row, the Blue Devils rarely missed. When they did miss, they typically snagged an offensive rebound and put the ball in the net.
"We got some key offensive rebounds," Goestenkors said. "I know we didn't have as many offensive rebounds as they did, but I felt the offensive rebounds we did get were very, very key. Tye got a couple off of the free-throw line, and then down the stretch, when we really needed to score, we got two offensive rebounds on two possessions for putbacks that really made the difference in the game."
Perhaps the play that best epitomized the change in momentum occurred with about seven minutes to play and Duke trailing 50-48. Orr was at the free-throw line, shooting her second shot. The ball bounced off the rim and into the hands of Hall, who put it back in to tie the game, and the Blue Devils never looked back.
"[That play] was a back breaker," Weller said. "You do not deserve to win that ball game if you are going to be in the correct defensive position, you are in the inside, in a free-throw setting and they still get the rebound. Then they want it more than you do."
Duke contained Maryland to just 36.7 percent shooting in the second half and grabbed ten more rebounds than the Terrapins. Leading this defensive surge were the Blue Devils' two post players, Hall and sophomore Payton Black. The pair combined for 13 rebounds and five blocks and effectively prevented Maryland from getting easy shots in the paint. In fact, the Terrapins only made one layup in the entire second half. Instead, the Terps were forced to take shots they didn't want to take, frequently hurrying shots as the shot clock wound toward zero.
"Both Payton Black and Tye Hall came up with big games," Weller said. "They did not play particularly well at our place, and I'm sure that was a tremendous focus for them and the coaching staff coming into this game."
Basketball fans often check only a player's point total, ignoring rebounds, blocks and steals, but in many situations, the latter three statistics are what determine the outcomes of games. The Terrapins learned this lesson well on Sunday.
"I told the players if we didn't rebound, we were going to lose the game," Goestenkors said. "That was the bottom line. We were down ten rebounds at halftime, and I thought we did an excellent job of controlling the boards better in the second half."
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