NORFOLK, Va. -- Going into Sunday's Sweet 16 matchup, both teams were anticipating a dense paint and tough crowd in the post. Louisiana Tech's top-two players, Trina Frierson and Amisha Carter, each averaging double figures in scoring, do their work down low. Duke also likes to pound the ball inside and had a clear height advantage with four players several inches taller than Frierson and Carter. However, it wasn't offensive dominance in the post but rather defensive control of the post, that allowed the Blue Devils to come out on top 63-49.
"[Louisiana Tech's] defense is just incredible," Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors said. "They make it hard for you to really run anything. And those two posts players, they're just tough for anybody to match up with.... Both teams really did a pretty good job on the defensive end.... We said that although we're two of the top scoring teams in the nation, we though it would come down to defense and I think it really did."
Both teams took and made about the same number of shots---Duke went 25-of-57 and Tech 22-of-66. The Blue Devils scored 18 of their 63 points inside the paint and 12 from beyond the arc. The Techsters tallied 20 points in the paint. But Carter, who has been averaging 17.2 points a game in the post, was held to just nine points and was forced into three turnovers. In addition, Duke's post players had 11 blocks that contained Carter and penetration from the Techsters' guards.
"They have two great post players and I felt like we could wear them down a little bit," Goestenkors said. "We certainly weren't going to stop them but we felt like if we continued to rotate people in it would be to our benefit. I think we did an excellent job on Carter and made her take tough shots. And Frierson, she scored and did a great job, but probably four of her shots were outside shots so overall we did a decent job in the paint on those two."
"What we wanted to do was to get help from the guards," post player Iciss Tillis said. "The guards wanted to double down on their post players in the beginning, and I thought we did a good job disrupting their post players."
On the other end of the court, the Blue Devils were having their own problems attacking the inside. Duke remained scoreless for the first five minutes of the game primarily because Louisiana Tech's tight man-to-man defense disrupted the Blue Devils' inside-outside passing game.
With increasing difficulty getting the ball inside, Duke was forced to take shots from the perimeter. And even then, the defense remained tight on the inside, tempting the Blue Devil guards to shoot from the perimeter where they were still missing open shots. Duke's scoring leader and most clutch player, Alana Beard, went 3-for-8 in the first half, and the Blue Devils shot 35.7 percent.
"I give a lot of credit to Louisiana Tech," said Beard, who ultimately finished with 17 points. "They made me take a lot of outside shots a lot of long jumpers."
It seemed almost as if the defensive prowess of both teams had canceled each other out, and contrary to pre-game expectation, the outcome of the game depended on perimeter offense rather than interior offense. This is where Louisiana Tech got beat. The Techsters shot 30.3 percent overall whereas, after improving its accuracy in the second half, Duke finished shooting 38.6 percent shooting.
"You can't beat the number one team in the country shooting 30 percent and that's what we ended up shooting tonight," Louisiana Tech head coach Kurt Budke said. "They had a lot to do with that and we missed some shots we normally hit tonight."
Once again, defense was the key when Tillis and Mistie Bass got in foul trouble. The Blue Devils were forced to switch to zone defense which led to miss-matches and confusion on the part of the Techsters.
"Both teams did a great job on defense, but I think the fact that we did a lot of switching in our defensive sets and that really bothered them," Beard said. "I think we doubled down really hard on the post players."
Duke had a much easier time translating its game to the perimeter. Vicki Krapohl came off the bench and hit three long buckets all from beyond the arch. Her first trey gave the Blue Devils their first lead, 11 minutes into the first half.
Then with 13 minutes remaining in the contest, the other dominant post player for Tech, Frierson, hit a short jumper over Tillis and then a put-back layup to bring the Techsters within three. But on the next possession, Krapohl took the dare by shooting an open three from the top of the key and sinking it. From that point forward, the Blue Devils controlled the game.
Ultimately both coaches were correct in assuming that the game was riding on the post. But what it came down to was really the ability to eliminate the post and balance that defense out with a solid perimeter. As the tournament narrows down, however, the Blue Devils will need to have a more aggressive offense overall from the tip.
"I was very frustrated because I felt like we were turning the ball over," Goestenkors said. "Tech plays unbelievable defense but many of our turnovers were unforced. They were daring our players to shoot, and I thought they were being disrespectful to our players. I'd take that personally if someone wouldn't guard me, but I didn't feel like our players were taking it personally. They were just standing with the ball over their head not being aggressive, so I was just telling them they need to be more aggressive, and this is the time we need to put the game away and on the offensive floor we needed to play like champions."
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