When Gail Goestenkors walked into the Hall of Fame room inside Cameron Indoor Stadium to meet with the assembled media following Duke's 60-51 victory over Clemson Sunday afternoon, the Blue Devil coach had but one complaint.
"We're going to watch the video [of the game], because this was not a great effort for us defensively overall compared to what we're used to, so we have to get back to the basics," Goestenkors said.
Back to the basics?
Pretty tough criticism for a defense that held the streaking Tigers to a mere 51 points. True, Clemson doesn't have the most prolific offense in the conference, but it was an offense that had just unloaded 60 points on 12th-ranked North Carolina six days earlier and followed that up with 71 points against No. 3 and previously undefeated N.C. State.
Both games resulted in Tiger upsets.
So why would the Blue Devils, who possess the nation's longest winning streak at 15 games, possibly be upset about holding Clemson to 25 first-half and 26 second-half points, when they had already given up more than 51 points in eight of their 16 games this season?
According to the players and their coach, points don't matter-Duke would have been content to hold the Tigers to anything less than 59 points as long as there was hustle on the defensive end. That, the Blue Devils say, was clearly missing.
"We're not happy at all with our defense overall," Goestenkors said. "I think 45 percent is probably the highest anybody has shot on us all year. They had players that shot the ball very, very well that we don't consider shooters. It seems that they always shoot well against us."
Clemson's 18-for-40 shooting performance for the evening was, in fact, the best any team has shot against the Blue Devils all season. The previous best shooting night against Duke came courtesy of Vanderbilt, who hit 44.2 percent of its field goal attempts in a 68-59 Blue Devil victory that kicked off the team's current winning streak back on Nov. 24.
If Duke had any problems on the defensive end Sunday, it was midway through the first half. In under seven minutes, the Tigers turned a four-point deficit into a six-point advantage with less than nine minutes remaining in the period.
The run began with a jumper by Tiger center Joanie Mungro that made the score 9-7 and sparked a 16-6 Clemson outburst. Clemson received production from nearly everyone during the streak as six players scored. The run included open three-pointers by Angie Cossey and Datishella Byrd. When Mungro cruised in for a layup and her sixth point, she put Duke in its largest hole of the game.
Yet, the fun ended there for Clemson. Duke's defense gave up only four points over the final 8:40 of the first half, but still the effort wasn't good enough for Goestenkors.
"Right before we went out [for the second half], I told the team we had held Clemson to 50 percent in the first half," she said. "They all laughed because we take so much pride in our defense that it was very embarrassing for us to have a team shoot 50 percent on us."
Although the Duke defense allowed five players to hit at least half their shots in the first half, the Blue Devil defense carried the day down the stretch. When Peppi Browne, who leads the Blue Devils with 52 steals on the season, committed her fourth and fifth fouls within a seven-second span, her team responded by yielding only three points over the next five-and-a-half minutes.
Duke's 9-3 run pushed the lead to 17 and put the game away. Afterward, a reporter told Gail Goestenkors that most coaches would be happy if their team held their opponent to 51 points.
With a smile and a shrug, Goestenkors calmly replied, "We're not."
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