CLEMSON, S.C. - Clemson coach Jim Davis' most indelible memory of his team's last meeting with the Blue Devils was watching Nicole Erickson put on a shooting showcase, draining three, after three, after three, and almost single-handedly erasing the Tigers' 10-point second-half lead.
Needless to say, it didn't rank among Davis' more cherished memories of the season. Yesterday, Davis and the Tigers made sure Erickson and her fellow outside gunners would not put on an encore performance in Littlejohn Coliseum.
Instead of focusing its defensive efforts on stopping the Blue Devils' leading scorer, Michele VanGorp, Clemson chose instead to lock up Duke's perimeter shooters and let VanGorp roam free inside.
In this seemingly risky choice in picking their poison, Davis and the Tigers apparently chose the right one and dealt Duke its first conference loss of the year.
"In the first game, they were getting the threes off and we knew we could defend better than that," Clemson guard Itoro Umoh said. "We just played [better defense] today. Coach Davis told us, 'If [Michele] VanGorp scored 30, we'll win.' And we did."
With those words, Davis now includes prophet on his resume, in addition to his roles as coach and motivator. VanGorp exploded for a career-high 35 points, scoring almost at will inside, but her teammates could muster little else offensively.
"We played very well against Duke up there," Davis said of last month's trip to Cameron. "Then they just started raining threes. So we talked about it before the game. I didn't care how many points VanGorp got, I just wanted to shut everyone down on the perimeter. I guess they made me look like I knew I was doing."
Prior to a pair of threes from Hilary Howard and Georgia Schweitzer in the final 40 seconds when the team was frantically trying to catch up, Duke had hit only two three-pointers in the game's first 39 minutes. For a team that led the ACC with 7.4 threes per contest, the surprising lack of production from the outside forced the offense to become almost one-dimensional for a majority of the game.
Compounding Duke's inability to get open on the perimeter was its inability to knock down the shot when players found themselves with clean looks. Erickson, the hero of the first game between the two teams, missed all four of her shots from long range, including three open looks.
Against Georgia Tech a week ago, the Blue Devils were also misfiring from long distance, but they compensated for their cold shooting by recognizing the defense and making the right passes to find the open player. Yesterday, the offense bogged down at times to watching one player work.
Many times, it was watching VanGorp earn points inside, but other times it was watching perimeter players trying to break down their defender unsuccessfully. Duke's starting backcourt duo of Howard and Erickson combined for an uncharacteristic 5-of-23 shooting from the floor, with many of the misses coming on forced and off-balance shots.
"We had been reversing the ball and getting good looks on reversal," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "For some unknown reason, we just stopped doing that, and everybody started going one-on-one. We're not successful when we do that; we're successful when we move the ball. We just didn't play smart."
For a team more reliant on maintaining a mental edge and playing as a team than running on sheer athletic talent, a mental lapse and Clemson's tough perimeter defense spelled doom for Duke's visions of a perfect run through the ACC.
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