CHARLOTTE - In the Atlantic Coast Conference, sometimes even the third time isn't a charm.
After two losses to archrival North Carolina during the regular season, No. 25 Duke found itself with one more chance for an upset on Saturday when both teams advanced to the second round of the ACC Women's Basketball tournament. The Blue Devils played with the nation's fifth-ranked team for most of the game but faded in the final minutes to fall 66-55.
Tar Heel guard Marion Jones came up with the critical play to send her team on its final run. Clinging to a one-point lead with less than 2:30 to play, Jones intercepted an entry pass from Naz Medhanie to Tye Hall, and raced end-to-end for a layup. Medhanie committed a foul, and Jones was able to convert the three-point play to give North Carolina a 58-54 lead.
"That was just a mental breakdown in a situation where you let one mistake become two mistakes," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said, "where you turn the ball over and then you allow them to go the length of the court and then follow with a touch foul for three points. I felt that really changed the momentum of the game."
On the Tar Heels' next possession, Nicole Walker put back a long miss by Jones to extend the lead to 60-54. Duke's last point came on Payton Black's free throw at the 1:27 mark, and North Carolina's Tracy Reid hit four free throws in the midst of an 11-1 run down the stretch to ice the victory.
Jones led the Tar Heels with 23 points, despite hitting just 10 of her 25 shots and going only 1-for-10 on three-point attempts. She had greater success attacking the basket off the dribble, electrifying the crowd at Independence Arena with two spectacular reverse layups in the second half.
"You've got to keep shooting until you make it," Jones said. "That's what I did tonight, and I got a few to fall. Yeah I missed a lot, but I have a lot of teammates that are going to make up for those missed shots and get the rebounds, and that's what happened."
North Carolina grabbed 17 offensive rebounds, including four each from Jones and forward Chanel Wright. The usually high-scoring Reid had three, but was held to four field goals-her lowest total of the season-and finished with 14 points.
Reid also got involved in a shouting match with members of the Duke band in the game's closing minutes. The exchange appeared to be heated, but Reid maintained that it was good-natured.
"They were saying a lot to me specifically," Reid said. "They were talking to me and telling me, 'What color is you hair?'... it was all fun and games."
Duke was led by Kira Orr, who finished with 24 points, nine rebounds and five assists. Center Payton Black was hampered by foul trouble and totaled 10 points, while Hall pulled down 13 boards but chipped in only seven points. Hall shot over 60 percent from the floor during the season, but was 3-for-10 from the field on Saturday.
"I really don't know what happened," Hall said. "They were shots that I normally put down, and that was kind of frustrating. I really couldn't tell you anything specific. It wasn't that I was not taking easy shots or that anyone was mentally getting me down."
The Blue Devils went on a 14-2 run over a span of 6:46 in the first half and held a lead as large as seven points. Reid scored six straight points for North Carolina to tie the game at 25 with 1:46 left in the half, and Jones hit a free throw after time expired to send her team into the locker room with a 28-27 lead.
Several lead changes highlighted the first several minutes of the second half, until Chanel Wright's three-pointer gave the Tar Heels a permanent lead with 9:54 to play. Coach Sylvia Hatchell credited her team's late-game run to a switch from man-to-man to zone defense.
"They were taking it all the way to the hoop and getting a lot of one-on-one stuff," Hatchell said. "We were just trying to change things up and give them a different look and try to take them out of their rhythm and their flow, and that seemed to work for us."
Duke also ran into a stifling zone defense in its 60-52 first-round triumph over Maryland. Sparked by the slashing moves of forward Sonia Chase and the long-range shooting of guard Kim Bretz, the Terrapins led for most of the game's final five minutes. The Terps led, 48-45, when a timeout was called with 40 seconds left, but Kira Orr's three-pointer from the left wing tied the game 10 seconds later and sent it to overtime.
"The whole time in the timeout I was just thinking, 'If I get to take a shot, just make it'," said Orr, who was 2-for-11 shooting up to that point. "That's all I was telling myself. I can go 0-for-20 from the field, but if we win, that's perfectly fine with me. As far as missing the other shots, it's all right, as long as that one went in."
The Blue Devils carried the momentum from Orr's clutch shot into the extra period, where Black, Hall and Hilary Howard combined to score the first eight points and carry Duke to the win.
"At the end of the game, when Kira hit that big three, I think all of a sudden I felt like we were going to win the game," Goestenkors said. "I felt like this big burden had lifted off of our shoulders... I think once we hit that shot everything loosened up for us."
Duke's loss in the semifinals prevented the team from reaching the ACC finals for the third consecutive year. An NCAA bid is almost a lock, though the team is unlikely to receive the No. 4 or better seed it would need to play its first two tournament games in the friendly atmosphere of Cameron Indoor Stadium. Still, Goestenkors told her players not to hang their heads after they gave it their all.
"Everything a coach dreams of and works for and hopes for, that's what our team put out there tonight," Goestenkors said. "I know they're very, very disappointed with the final outcome, as am I. But I've never been prouder of any them-not of any team in my career. They laid everything out on the floor, and when you do that, it's all you can really ask as a coach."
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