RALEIGH - 32 minutes into Wednesday night's contest at Reynolds Coliseum, Duke led N.C. State 46-24. The fans were rather bored, to say the least. Duke's advantage came mostly from a wealth of lay-ups, particularly off the break. Both sides looked anemic from the perimeter.
As the immortal Woody Harrelson uttered so profoundly in White Men Can't Jump, "Why don't we just gather up all these bricks and build a house for the homeless or something?"
There was certainly no shortage of building material, that's for sure. The two sides combined to miss 86 of their 113 shots, including 19-of- 21 from three-point range. There were also a collective 44 turnovers.
"It was probably one of the ugliest games of basketball, offensively, that I've seen in a long time," Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors said. "Both teams really struggled."
Iciss Tillis, two-time defending ACC player of the week, agreed.
"It's kind of shocking because in practice we have been doing well offensively," she said. "I was expecting us to have a good game, offensively. That was kind of odd."
The Blue Devils' 22 turnovers looked particularly out of place. In their relentless desire to push the ball up the court, players passed with a little too much reckless abandon.
"I was glad we we're trying to push it but I thought that our timing was off a little bit," Goestenkors said. "Too high, too long - I'm not sure exactly why. I think we were excited to be able to run. We hadn't been running much in recent games, but there's not excuse for that. We had 13 turnovers in the first half and we're usually a team that takes care of the basketball."
Duke looked impressive from a hustle standpoint, however. The Blue Devils were particularly outstanding on the glass, outrebounding N.C. State 48-32.
"We know that rebounds are a tough area for us," said Wolfpack head coach Kay Yow. "We're still working on that. We know we lost the battle there."
Although the Blue Devils appeared to have a formidable size advantage inside, their impressive rebounding edge appeared to come mostly from sheer tenacity. Diminutive point guard Lindsey Harding - all 5-feet-8 of her - pulled down five offensive rebounds by herself.
"You certainly would like to think that the short guards couldn't get in the lane to follow a shot," Yow said, seemingly a little miffed at such a statistical oddity.
High flying Duke entered Wednesday night averaging more than 85 points a game, with just 14 turnovers. Their performance tonight featured little of that offensive firepower. But one of the truest cliches in basketball lexicon is that defense really does win championships.
Floor burns and grit go a long way against whomever you're playing, and will certainly be needed in large supply this Saturday when the Connecticut Huskies, the nation's only other undefeated team, come to Cameron with their record-setting 58-game winning streak on the line.
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