LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - Through most of the Blue Devils' game against Tennessee yesterday, they battled toe-to-toe with the reigning queens of women's basketball. Unfortunately for Duke, it just had a little trouble getting out of the locker room.
Reeling off runs of 11-3 and 12-2 to begin the first and second halves, the third-ranked Lady Volunteers downed the No. 16 Blue Devils, 74-60, in the finale of the Honda Elite Four Holiday Classic at Walt Disney's Wide World of Sports Field House yesterday.
"We know we're not the most athletic team, so we have to out-execute our opponents," Duke center Michele VanGorp said. "The first five minutes of the game, we didn't [execute]. We just need to concentrate on going out there and getting the job done."
Although Duke stifled Tennessee's vaunted attack in the halfcourt from the get-go, the Volunteers were still able to jump out in front 11-3 on the strength of three transition baskets, including two off Duke turnovers.
"They have real athletic guards that took us out of our offense in the beginning and put us on our heels," Duke guard Hilary Howard said. "We need to take advantage of [their] pressure. If they pressure us, we need to attack the basket. We just weren't ready for that in the first five minutes of the game. That's our fault."
After the sluggish start, the Blue Devils nearly matched Tennessee basket for basket behind an effective ball-denial defense. Duke's sagging man scheme, very similar to the defense employed by Purdue in its upset of Tennessee earlier this year, limited Tennessee's all-world performer Chamique Holdsclaw to 12 points, including only two in the second half, on 6-of-15 shooting.
The Blue Devils also handcuffed Holdsclaw's two other main partners in crime, Tamika Catchings and Semeka Randall, to the tune of a combined 17 points and nine rebounds.
"I knew they were going to play physically, a lot like what North Carolina did last year," Holdsclaw said. "They are in the same conference, so we thought that would be their gameplan. They pressured us and tried to get us to throw the ball away."
With the "Three Meeks" held in check for much of the game, it was the Volunteers' most unheralded starter, center Teresa Geter, that gave the Blue Devils fits.
Geter, previously averaging only 6.7 points a game, poured in 17 and grabbed nine rebounds as well as contributing 10 points to the Volunteers' two half-opening spurts.
"Teresa Geter played the best game I've seen her play," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "When she started hitting from the free throw line, it really extended our defense. We weren't expecting that from her; she really stepped up for them."
Another Volunteer who stepped up was sophomore guard Kristen Clement. With her ability to penetrate, outside touch and textbook pressure defense, Clement proved to be a thorn in Duke's side numerous times.
After Duke ran off six straight points in the first half to cut the lead to 11, Clement drained a three from the right wing to stuff Duke's momentum. In the second half, Clement took the ball coast-to-coast and converted a layup to stop a 7-0 Duke run. In this game of spurts, Tennessee proved to have just a few more runs up their sleeves.
When VanGorp began wreaking havoc inside in the second half, Tennessee raised its defensive pressure. After Georgia Schweitzer hit Duke's first three-pointer of the game with seven minutes left, the Volunteers answered by attacking the Blue Devils' interior defense.
"I think we learned a lot about ourselves," Goestenkors said. "Against Tennessee, we can't play 20 minutes of good basketball. We have to play 40 great minutes."
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