Tye Hall may have been feeling nauseous Sunday, but she made the Maryland Terrapins feel much worse.
Hall, battling a sick stomach that forced her to miss the first part of the game, played 31 of the final 32 minutes, scoring a team-high 20 points and grabbing seven rebounds in leading the Blue Devils to a 66-57 victory over Maryland at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
"Tye was sick," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "She was getting sick during the warm-up. I asked her if she could start and she didn't look very good. I told her to just take some time.... She came in and did a tremendous job for us."
The win moved Duke (16-6, 8-4 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) firmly into third place in the ACC, while Maryland (15-7, 6-6 in the ACC) fell two games behind Duke, tied with Clemson for fourth.
Without Hall in the lineup, the Blue Devils struggled early on. Despite sophomore center Payton Black scoring eight of the team's first 12 points, Duke still found itself trailing by five, 17-12, when Terrapin freshman guard Tiffany Brown connected from three-point range. Hall entered the game, but it took a while for her and her team to get in rhythm as Maryland extended its lead to nine points, 27-18, with 6:08 left in the first half.
Duke spent the remaining six minutes chipping away at the Terrapins' lead. Despite the late start, Hall contributed greatly, scoring eight first-half points on four-of-five shooting, twice laying the ball in off timely feeds from sophomore guard Nazrawit Medhanie.
Still, Duke was only able to trim the deficit to three at 33-30 as the teams headed for the locker rooms at the break. One key factor in Maryland's lead was rebounding. The Terrapins cleaned the glass in the first half, outrebounding Duke 20-to-10, led by junior Kalisa Davis, who had six.
"I thought Maryland played an excellent game," Goestenkors said. "I thought they really outworked us and outhustled us in the first half. I was very disappointed with our effort, especially on the boards. We've been working on our rebounding, and it did not show in the first half."
The second half started out in much the same way as the first, with both teams battling back and forth. With the Blue Devils trailing, 39-34, with 16:41 remaining in the game, Duke went on a 9-2 run, taking the lead at 43-41 on a Medhanie trey.
Maryland refused to go down, however, answering with a 9-0 run of its own to bring the lead back up to seven points at 50-43. Brown capped the run with a three-pointer with 9:19 remaining. Things looked bleak for the Blue Devils, as it seemed they could not put the Terrapins away.
That's when Duke's senior leadership took over.
"I think both Tye and I looked around," said guard Kira Orr, who finished the game with 16 points, "and gathered the players on the court and said, 'You guys just settle down. We have nine minutes left in this game. There's no rush to get it back right away. Let's just take our time and ease back into the game. Everything will come to us then.'"
Little did Maryland know, but the Brown three-pointer was the last time the Terrapins would score for over seven minutes, as the Blue Devils, led by the two seniors, launched a 14-0 run that put the game away.
Hall started things off with a jumper on a pass from Black, and Orr followed with one of her own. Then came the play which shifted all of the momentum towards the Blue Devils.
With Duke down, 50-47, Orr drove the lane and was fouled by junior Sonia Chase. She made the first free throw, but missed the second to the right. Hall found herself all alone under the hoop. She grabbed the rebound and laid the ball in, tying the game at 50.
"We just ran our free throw play," Hall said. "Payton and I looked at each other and said, 'Let's run it this time.' She did a good job of pushing her girl into the middle, and her side was wide open and I took advantage of it."
The play knocked the wind out of the Terrapins, who went on to miss their next six shots.
"Tye's play was a backbreaker," Maryland coach Chris Weller said. "You do not deserve to win that ballgame if you are going to be in the correct defensive position in a free throw setting and they get the rebound. [It means] they want it more than you do."
Meanwhile, Duke continued its run. Sophomore Hilary Howard (nine points and five assists on the night) and Black (12 points, seven rebounds, three blocks) hit baskets around an Orr free throw to extend the lead to five. Hall followed with a layup to give the Blue Devils a 57-50 lead they would not relinquish.
"I was very proud of the way we came back down the stretch, especially at the 10-minute mark when we were down seven," Goestenkors said. "I felt like at that point we really began to put it together and make a real strong defensive stand, and we executed much better offensively."
Maryland senior Lillian Purvis, who led the Terrapins with 19 points on 9-of-11 shooting, scored a layup to end the drought at the 1:59 mark, but Orr nailed the coffin closed when she drained a three to give the Blue Devils a 60-52 lead with 1:27 left to play. From there, it was a game of free throws, and the Blue Devils came out with a very important W.
Much the same as the first half, rebounding continued to be the story. The 10-rebound advantage which Maryland had in the first half was reversed in the second stanza, as Duke held a 19-9 advantage on the boards. Hall and Black led the way with five and four second-half rebounds, respectively.
"We take it very personally," Hall said. "When we're getting outrebounded, we just have to buck up and play as hard as we can. Both of us in the second half, we were just trying our hardest to get as many rebounds as we could."
Goestenkors summed up what gave Duke the upper hand in a single word.
"Effort-that's all it was," she said. "We were doing the same things in the second half that we did in the first half, but a little extra effort made all the difference."
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