Duke scored in the first four seconds Wednesday night to get an early lead. The rest of the game was no better for visiting Lander.
Chante Black won clear possession for the Blue Devils on the tip-off, tapping the ball behind her to Lindsey Harding on her left side. Harding tossed a quick pass to Monique Currie, who immediately laid it in from the right side to score the first two of Duke's 116 points.
Twenty-one seconds later, Lander's Jennifer Hukill tied the game with a jump shot from the left elbow, but the quick back-and-forth scoring action was only a tease.
No. 1 Duke crushed Lander-an NCAA Division II school from Greenwood, S.C.-116-29, at Cameron Indoor Stadium in its second exhibition game of the season.
Following the 2-2 start, the Blue Devils did not let the Bearcats score for nearly 17 minutes. In the interim, Duke racked up 50 points to open up an embarrassing lead.
"It was just kind of a tough game to play," head coach Gail Goestenkors said. "I give Lander a lot of credit. They played really hard. They're very feisty, and they never gave up. It just gave us the chance to really work on our transition game and some different things defensively, but it was just a tough game."
Currie, who was recently named to the preseason All-America team, tallied 11 points and five assists for the Blue Devils in her first game this season. Along with teammate Jessica Foley, the senior sat out against EA Sports Nov. 2 because of minor injuries.
"It's nice to be able to play and not have any nagging injuries," Currie said.
"It's basically impossible [not to run up the score]," Goestenkors said. "Towards the end, we finally just said 'no more fast breaks' because we could fast break at almost any opportunity. We basically just stopped running the ball to try and work on some quarter-court stuff. Even that's difficult because it's hard to tell players when they have breakaway layups not to shoot them."
Many of Duke's fast-break opportunities resulted from Lander's 31 turnovers. The Blue Devils pressured the Lady Bearcat guards and stole the ball almost at will. Duke finished the game with 17 steals.
"Thirty-one turnovers for a Division II school that's picked last in the conference against Duke, that's actually not bad," Lander head coach Kevin Pederson said. "I was kind of surprised that we only turned over 31 turnovers."
Although Duke's defense was effective, Goestenkors still was not pleased with her own team's sloppy play-the Blue Devils totalled 17 turnovers on the night.
"Sometimes we steal the ball; we get a turnover, and then we're in a such a rush to score that we turn the ball over unnecessarily. And we can't have that," Goestenkors said. "Defensively we're taking too many chances. We've just got to do a better job staying in the play and not just going for the block or going for the steal."
With more than a week to go before Duke's season opener at Penn State Nov. 18, Goestenkors said the team will need to improve upon Wednesday night's mistakes.
"I think we've still got a good bit to work on," Goestenkors said. "We saw some weaknesses today on both ends of the floor, some things we can work on. So I'm glad we've got another week to get better."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.