Maybe it was the football team winning the ACC Championship or just that the Lady Hokies were having a tough day, but the Lady Blue Devils came to Cassell on the first weekend in December and defeated the Hokies pretty soundly. The reality of sports with long seasons is that you are going to take a few losses and maybe learn something from them. That doesn’t salve the feelings but it’s early enough in the season to bring some focus and create some creativity in bringing solutions to the table.
You Can’t Win If You Aren’t Hitting
It’s a big difficult to say just exactly what wasn’t hitting outside of the most obvious fact that the Hokies just were not getting shots to fall. They were putting up attempts but not much was going in and added to that their work on rebounding seemed to have faded. But it was that shot production that crippled them the most. The end numbers tell the final tale. Duke was 23-57 from the floor (only 4 3-pointers showed the inside domination). They dominated the boards on both ends of the court pulling down 50 rebounds (16 offensive, 34 defensive) and the lady Hokies just couldn’t keep up. The Hokies ultimately shot 26 1/2% from the floor and managed just 34 rebounds.
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Tech did manage to hang with Duke in the 1st and 2nd quarters. The first quarter ended in just a 2-point differential, with Samyha putting the Lady Hokies ahead in a low scoring start for both teams, but with a bit more than 2 minutes on the clock, Duke hit a three and pulled ahead of the Hokies for the remainder of the game.
The Hokies would keep it close in the 2nd quarter, but the first quarter shooting problems continued. They hit at a game high 38 1/2% but that was just barely keeping pace with Duke. The decent news was that the horn sounded on the half with the Lady Hokies only losing the quarter by 6 points and the game had not gotten out of hand. Even though the Tech offense was sputtering their defense had kept them in the game, 26-34. Eight points was not insurmountable at the halfway point and a break to make adjustments and find solutions to problems.
The Third Quarter Rule Bit Hard
The Third was its own special lesson in the rule that the quarter often determines the outcome of the game either with insurmountable points or a serious momentum shift in a close contest. This one was pretty solidly in the former category, though arguments could be made that both factors came into play. Duke’s steady lead building and constant flipped exchanges morphed into a huge scoring drought for Tech. The Hokies were stuck at 37 from just over the 4-minute mark until nearly the 1 and 2/3rds minutes before the period horn.
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The Hokies just couldn’t get anything going on offense. It’s not that Duke was piling it on, it’s just that the Hokies could not find the bucket to answer. Leila Wells scored the last point of the period with a foul shot, but the Lady Blue Devils had stretched their lead to 15 points, and nothing short of a complete shooting miracle in the 4th quarter was going to get the Hokies back on track.
There were no Cassell Coliseum miracles for this one. Tech’s shooting woes continued in the 26% range, and as the time ticked away there was just nothing left but artificial fouls to hope to slow down the Lady Blue Devils who had pushed a 21-point cushion at 6 minutes in the period. At that point, Tech really had no hope of catching up.
The final horn sounded on a game that had ended six minutes earlier. Tech had made up a few points off of the 21-point deficit and ended the period with Carleigh draining a step-back three, but other than capturing a bit of pride, the game had gotten far out of hand by the 3rd quarter.
Final score: 54-70 Duke
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Significant Statistics
Only Carleigh Wenzel managed to get into double digits with 15 points. She was a very good 3-7 from deep, but really struggled getting the ball to fall inside the arc. Carleigh’s free-throw shooting stayed excellent at 4-4. She was also stout in defense, though not big on the boards, with a block and two steals going with 2 defensive rebounds.
The remainder of the team struggled over various aspects of their games. Carys Baker had shooting issues and only scored 6, along with Kilah Freelon who also had foul trouble, and Samyha Suffren. Mackie Nelson had 5 points. Mel Daley, Kayl Petersen, Leila Wells, and Aniya Trent each put in 4 points, but none of them played much more than half a game each other than Mel Daley.
Sometimes, you just don’t have enough of enough to get the win. The Hokies will have to take this one to practice and under advisement. Duke plays a heavy contact, inside game with max pressure up, and good inside shooting and a heavy active rebounding presence. There are several other ACC squads that follow the pattern, and Coach Duffy needs to find a way to help her team ditch the lid. If Tech had just hit closer to 50% of their shots the game would have either been a win or much closer at the end.
Time to learn, adjust, and move on.
