STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Abby Waner did not look like the player who had missed four consecutive games and then struggled to return to form over the previous two contests.
Instead, she looked like the preseason All-ACC player she was picked to be.
Waner posted a season-best 23 points, including six three-pointers, tying her career high.
The most telling statistic of Waner's performance, though, was her 15 points that came in the second half when her team was trailing by double-digits and needed her the most. Head coach Joanne P. McCallie said this was the first game since Waner's ankle injury prior to the South Florida contest for which Waner practiced and prepared.
"Although she played against Connecticut and Vanderbilt, she was not back at all," McCallie said. "She was still very much having difficulty. It was great to see Abby be able to play her game [today]."
Waner stepped up her game, but the rest of the team could not match her level, and Duke fell short in the end, just as it did in the previous two contests.
At the end of the game, with the score tied at 84 with seven seconds left, all the Blue Devils needed to do was keep Penn State from scoring in order to force an overtime period. The defense, however, was as stringent as a sieve, and Brianne O'Rourke found Janessa Wolff under the basket for the go-ahead layup with less than one second left. Once freshman Karima Christmas air-balled a jump shot to end the game, Waner's efforts had been for naught.
The junior guard, though, certainly did all she could to put her team in position to pull off the victory after an 11-point deficit at halftime.
Waner started the second half off with a bang, intercepting a pass at the Lady Lions' free-throw line and taking it the length of the floor for an easy two points to cut the lead to nine just 20 seconds in. Three minutes later, she hit a three to cut the Penn State lead to six. Another two minutes into the half, she connected on a three that was well beyond the arc and by far the longest shot of the day.
Waner, however, refused to accept all the credit for her strong performance.
"My teammates did an excellent job of being able to find me," Waner said.
She continued to hit big shots and find open teammates when guarded. At the very end, with less than a minute remaining, she slipped away from her defender just long enough to receive a pass from center Chante Black and, without having her feet set, drained a three to pull Duke within two. After the Lady Lions hit two free throws to go ahead by four, Waner found Christmas under the basket to make it a one-possession game again with 11 seconds remaining.
After the game, McCallie was quick to point out that Waner's success came in spite of receiving heavy attention from the Penn State defense.
"I think Abby stayed active," McCallie said. "I don't think she was that open. Some of those shots were with people running at her. I thought Abby worked hard, I thought she stayed active and she really took advantage of the opportunities she had."
McCallie was not the only coach who praised Waner's performance. Opposing coach Coquese Washington, who originally recruited Waner out of high school when she was head coach at Notre Dame, also thought Waner did an admirable job.
"She is just a phenomenal shooter," Washington said. "I've seen her hit big shots in high school, I've seen her hit big shots in the college game. She is just a tremendous shooter, and some of the threes she hit, if we were any closer, we would have fouled her. She just made some big plays."
It is unfortunate for Waner, then, that the rest of the team did not match her performance and come up with the final stop the Blue Devils needed.
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