It was a solid day for head coach Joanne P. McCallie.
Her team received some good news early Thursday afternoon, inking a recruiting class ranked No. 1 by at least one recruiting service for the second straight year; however, the best part of the day came at the new Auburn Arena, where the Blue Devils defeated the Tigers 75-62.
Duke (3-0) played an aggressive first half of its first road contest of the season, particularly on the offensive end. The Blue Devils outscored the Tigers 24-4 in the paint in the first half, taking advantage of a smaller defense down low. According to McCallie, patience allowed the team to get in the lane.
“I think it was the players working together,” McCallie said. “The decision making of the guards to not pull the trigger too quick and be able to get the ball down there. Also, the aggressiveness of our post players demanding the ball. So, I think with the guards getting in there and the post players being aggressive, it was that combination.”
Freshman Haley Peters came off the bench and led the offense in the first half, scoring ten points and pulling down five rebounds. Behind Peters’s hot hand, Duke held an early advantage off the bench, outscoring Auburn 18-7 in the first period. The Blue Devils also played stingy defense, forcing 11 turnovers that were converted for 15 points.
Auburn (1-2) refused to go away despite a number of disadvantages, down only ten points at halftime. Duke’s inability to shoot from behind the arc (4-for-18 on the night) kept the Tigers in the game, but the Blue Devils’ overall shooting was much better. Duke scored on 30 of their 60 attempts, with five players scoring ten points or more. Auburn had played excellent defense early in the season, averaging almost 14 steals and six blocks a game leading into the contest. Duke, however, held an enormous edge in both steals (15-8) and blocks (5-0), a key statistic considering the Tigers’ previous success in those categories.
“Any time you can shoot 50 percent from the floor, it shows good decision making,” McCullie said. “Defensively, to hold a team to 50 shots in a game and disrupt things for them, I think that is good”
The Blue Devils ultimately ran away at the end of the second half. Duke’s patience in the paint was too much for the Auburn defense to stop, and the Blue Devils totaled 48 points in the lane Thursday. Senior Jasmine Thomas was the player of the game, scoring 16 points as well as dishing out five assists. According to Thomas, passing and patience is something the team has been preached all week.
“That’s something we’ve been working on,” Thomas said. “We still don’t have the assist-to-turnover ratio we’re looking for. In our first two games we had one time out where we had a poor assist performance and we’ve been talking a lot about finding an open player and taking the easy shots. We had a lot of easy shots tonight, but we need to be more patient and those shots will go in.”
Duke will return to Cameron Indoor Stadium Sunday to take on Western Kentucky at 2 p.m.
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