FRESNO, Calif. — Caught in hostile territory against the home-state team, the battle-tested Blue Devils finally found themselves facing a deficit they could not overcome this season.
Despite a strong second-half performance, No. 2 seeded Duke could overcome its first-half deficit Monday night, running into its third straight loss in the regional final, 81-69.
“It was a good basketball game, and I appreciate our team’s fight and how we played,” head coach Joanne P. McCallie said. “I’m very proud of our team. This is a team that has overcome adversity in an incredible way, a team that has fought through so many things outside their control.”
The Blue Devils got off to a poor start and found themselves down 15 points by the end of the first half, as they were unable to hold down Cardinal star Nnemkadi Ogwumike and her younger sister Chiney.
“They’re a really strong group, and if one doesn’t have a strong shot, the other does,” said sophomore Chelsea Gray, who was named to the Fresno All-Region team. “They possess a lot of leadership qualities for their team, so credit to them. They’ve worked hard for their team.”
Nnemkadi Ogwumike scored 15 points in the first half and her younger sister notched 10 rebounds, but Duke’s problems did not end with the Ogwumikes’ dominance.
The Blue Devils struggled on the offensive front in the first half, too, shooting 40.7 percent from the field—Stanford made 51.7 percent of its shots in that span—and making only 1-of-4 of their attempts from beyond the arc. On defense, they were outrebounded 18-11.
“Coming into halftime, coach talked about how we only had three offensive boards and to attack the glass more and be more aggressive,” said Gray, who finished with a team-high 23 points and added four rebounds.
Urged on by McCallie’s words, Duke emerged from the locker room looking like an entirely different team. The Blue Devils began to play like the team they had been all tournament—the team that dominated St. John’s just two nights before, and Vanderbilt and Samford the week before.
The team was able to claw back from the deficit by doing what it could not do during the first 20 minutes—slow down the Ogwumikes. Freshman and All-Region player Elizabeth Williams held the elder Ogwumike to four points during the first 13 minutes of the second half before she got her fourth foul with 7:05 remaining. Ogwumike finished with 14 points in the second half.
“I think Elizabeth is a warrior… and I think what you saw there was a senior with experience playing her game, and a first-year student-athlete learning about some things defensively,” McCallie said. “Again, [Nnemkadi] is a really, really good player, and she was the difference in the first half, and if you take away her 15 points, you have a tied game.”
While Williams contained the Stanford star, Duke trimmed the Cardinal’s lead to single-digits, narrowing the margin to eight points before Stanford broke loose with about five minutes remaining.
“I tried to encourage everybody to get after it, box out, rebound, because I knew that would lead to a better offensive side, but unfortunately we couldn’t bring everything together,” said senior Shay Selby, who finished with 11 points and five rebounds. “It was very frustrating to do all of that hard work and get a stop and then they get an offensive rebound… it just kind of sucks the air out of you, and they did that multiple times.”
Adding to Selby’s frustration was that the loss marked the senior’s last appearance in a Duke jersey and the Blue Devils’ third straight Elite 8 exit.
“I’m upset, but it was a good run,” she said. “I think this will probably hurt the most because when you’re a sophomore or a junior, you think you have next year, but I have no next year.”
The veteran had encouraging words for the younger players on the team, however, and McCallie’s post-game remarks reflected that sentiment, too.
“This will be a teaching moment, a learning game for the returning players,” she said. “When you don’t end the way you want to, when you don’t end on your own terms and on somebody else’s terms, it stings.”
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