WINSTON-SALEM - With few shots falling and their center on the bench in foul trouble in the second half, the Blue Devils relied on senior point guard Lindsey Harding and their stingy defense to pull out another ACC road win.
Led by Harding's steadying 13-point performance, No. 1 Duke (26-0, 11-0 in the ACC) overcame its worst shooting night of the season to cruise to a sloppy, yet easy 77-45 win over the Demon Deacons (9-15, 0-10 in ACC) in the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
"[Harding] knows what she is supposed to do and does it, and that why she's a really great player," Wake Forest head coach Mike Petersen said. "I think that she is the most dominant player in our league. Every game that they've played where she has needed to step up, she's pretty much batting 1.000 right now."
On paper, the two teams could not have been more different, as Duke came into Sunday's matchup as the nation's lone undefeated team-and with a 29-game win streak over Wake Forest dating back to 1993.
Meanwhile, the struggling Demon Deacons have only one win since December (over independent Winston-Salem State) and have not won an ACC contest since last season.
The disparities on the court were not as wide as the stat sheet would suggest, however. Both teams struggled to find the basket in an error-filled first half in which Wake Forest committed 14 turnovers.
The tight Blue Devil defense held the Demon Deacons to 25.9-percent shooting in the first half, and despite shooting only 33.3 percent in the same period, Duke was able to capitalize on Wake Forest's mistakes.
The Blue Devils converted 19 Demon Deacon turnovers into 25 points for the game.
To complicate matters for Duke, center Alison Bales got into early foul trouble, recording her third foul with two minutes to go in the first half. Bales, who averages 4.76 blocks per game, did not record a rejection for the first time this year and only played 22 minutes, the fewest she has played in any ACC game this season.
Bales' absence from the court kept the Blue Devils from finding their offensive rhythm early.
"At halftime, [head coach Gail Goestenkors] came in and said we only have six assists in this game, so we weren't sharing the ball like we normally do," Harding said. "We weren't knocking down our normal shots, and that's when you're supposed to share the ball more. That's what I think our problem was."
Duke's troubles persisted after the break, as Wake Forest reeled off an 8-2 run during the half's first four minutes, trimming the Blue Devil lead to eight.
In response, Goestenkors called a timeout, giving her team a tongue-lashing, and soon after a media timeout at the 15:28 mark, Duke finally reacted to its coach and went on 14-3 run that put the game permanently out of reach.
"It was entirely effort," Goestenkors said of her team's early second half performance. "They were attacking Ali, and we were getting beat and our rotations weren't good. So twice in a row they scored layups because we weren't rotating quickly enough."
Notes:
With Ali Bales on the sidelines, freshman Joy Cheek scored a career-high 13 points, going a perfect 7-for-7 from the free-throw line. Cheek's scoring led the Duke bench, which contributed 35 points in the victory. Wake Forest's bench, in contrast, only added three points out of the team's 45.
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