Counterpoint: Losses on offense too much to overcome for Duke women's basketball

Two of our women's basketball beats Evan Kolin and Glen Morgenstern engage in a point/counterpoint debating whether or not the Blue Devils will return to the NCAA tournament. Here is Glen's argument for why Duke will fall short, to read the point, click here:

Here’s a riddle: How does a college basketball team lose its top two players to the WNBA while maintaining the same level of play the next year? If you haven’t found an answer, it’s okay—the Blue Devils have not found one either.

Those two players—guards Lexie Brown and Rebecca Greenwell—were the heart, soul and face of Duke women’s basketball. The Splash Sisters accounted for 45 percent of the team’s scoring last year, including 68 percent of their 3-point scoring, before getting drafted into the pros. 

Much of the interior scoring belonged to forward Erin Mathias, who graduated this spring. In Brown, Greenwell and Mathias, the Blue Devils had seasoned veterans and scoring threats. With all three gone, it is questionable whether they have either on the roster. The Splash Sisters’ departure presents a bevy of head-scratching questions that leaves one doubtful that the Blue Devils have what it takes to earn another NCAA tournament berth this season.

For instance, who will take over the scoring load this year? The obvious answer is star redshirt junior guard Haley Gorecki—who averaged 11 points per game last year—but Gorecki’s hip injuries caused her to redshirt her sophomore year and held the Palatine, Ill., native, out of significant stretches of her freshman and junior years. It would be wise for head coach Joanne P. McCallie to let other players develop into scoring options alongside Gorecki. Of course, it’s possible that nobody else steps up, in which case the burden of carrying the Blue Devil offense will rest entirely on the health of Gorecki’s hips.

Uncertainty also lingers around the point guard position. Until Kyra Lambert fully recovers from her torn ACL—Lambert does not appear close to returning to game action—McCallie wants much of her team to be capable of running the offense. At the press conference following the Blue/White scrimmage, McCallie listed six people who she wanted handling the ball until Lambert’s return, a fairly high number considering that only one can play that role at any given time. This could bring the emergence of a new point guard or possibly just turmoil. Either way, it’s going to be fun to watch how this one pans out.

Brown, Greenwell and Mathias were not just volume scorers, but also Duke’s most efficient free throw shooters. Besides those three, the highest free throw percentage on the team last year belonged to Gorecki, who shot 72 percent from the charity stripe. Someone is going to have to take those clutch free throws, and McCallie will surely want better chances with games in the balance. If things don’t improve on that front, look for the Blue Devils to get crunched in crunch time.

And what’s going to happen come crunch time, anyway? Brown and Greenwell led the team since their sophomore year and took control in tense moments during the past three seasons. Whoever the team looks to in the final moments of a tight game this year, it will likely be her first time under that much pressure, even for the more experienced players on the squad. It can be hard to trust veterans when they do not play like veterans.