As the season wears on, tired legs lead to missed jumpers and the game slows down, it’s useful to have a strong inside presence to turn to on offense.
A year ago, the Blue Devils leaned on Chante Black as their back-to-the basket scorer. Black—the team’s leader in points—was usually able to overpower her defender given good position in the post. Unfortunately for Duke, this offensive set was highly predictable and easy to adjust to, causing the Blue Devils’ scoring to stagnate late in games. A quick look at Duke’s season-ending loss to Michigan State, in which the Blue Devils failed to score from the field in the final seven-and-a-half-minutes, is proof enough.
Nevertheless, the concept of an inside-out offense wasn’t the problem. It was merely the execution that failed. Which is why a year later, Duke is still determined to work the ball inside, but with a different set of personnel, and, it hopes, better results.
“We’re going to play the ball inside and out, and attack the paint and be aggressive, because we want to get to the paint and we want to get to the free-throw line, and we want that as a mainstay in things we do,” head coach Joanne P. McCallie said.
The Blue Devils no longer have a power center capable of dominating the game on the offensive end. Instead, the team has a bevy of post players, each with a different skill set, lending diversity—and sometimes inconsistency—to the inside attack.
Junior center Krystal Thomas has assumed Black’s position in the starting lineup, but has functioned mainly in a defensive capacity. At 6-foot-4, Thomas is a force on the boards and can alter shots, leading the team with 7.1 rebounds and nearly two blocks per game.
Meanwhile, freshman Allison Vernerey has provided the perfect offensive complement to Thomas. Vernerey has a thinner frame, but her smooth stroke makes her a double-digit threat on any given night, and the freshman has hit that mark nine times this season. In the team’s Feb. 26 contest against then-No. 18 Virginia, Vernerey put up 17 points on 8-of-8 shooting while Thomas led Duke with nine rebounds and two blocks, demonstrating the Blue Devils’ options at center.
“It’s worked in our offense as far as bringing different looks into the post,” junior guard Jasmine Thomas said. “Allison’s a finesse player [and] she finishes well at the basket. [Krystal Thomas] is a power down in the post.... It puts a lot of versatility down there in the post and it helps us because we can just rotate them in.”
The most noteworthy aspect of Duke’s offense this year has been the frequency of post-ups from the forwards. Senior Joy Cheek worked with Black in the paint last year as a power forward, but has often played on the perimeter this season, utilizing her range and height to shoot over smaller defenders. That leaves room inside for the small forwards, namely Bridgette Mitchell and Karima Christmas, to operate.
Christmas, in particular, has been a force at the three despite coming off the bench for the majority of the season. Her combination of size and athleticism is a nightmare for defenders down low, and the result has been a jump in the junior’s scoring average to 9.5 points per game. Like many of her teammates, Christmas is capable of exploding offensively, most recently against Maryland Feb. 21 when she put up 25 points on just 13 shots.
“It’s just that [Bridgette and I] are versatile players,” Christmas said. “We have height to play in the post and quickness to play in the post. Either way, we can play outside or inside. It’s helping the team out a lot.”
The Blue Devils’ multi-faceted, and nearly unpredictable, post attack has posed a significant defensive challenge for opposing teams. Duke doesn’t have one player down low to focus on, and Christmas and Mitchell are mismatches for smaller wings.
“It makes it extremely hard [to defend] because when you have two players like Karima and [Bridgette] playing in the post, they can take the larger and slower posts outside and go around them,” Cheek said. “Their quickness is what helps. It helps our defense, too, because their speed allows them to get deflections.”
No matter how each player is contributing, the very fact that so many Blue Devils have the ability to make a difference on the offensive end has made this year’s squad more effective. Chante Black doesn’t play in Cameron Indoor Stadium anymore, but the post players Duke does have should give the team a fighting chance in the coming weeks.
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