2007 NCAA Tournament Greensboro Regional (1) Duke 62, (8) Temple 52 RBC Center, Raleigh NC March 20, 2007 Recap and Analysis by Rob Clough Photos and Captions by Orin Day Publication Update 3/24/07: All photos are now published...on to Greensboro! I hope to make the Second Half gallery available later tonight. Under ideal conditions, each captioned gallery takes a couple hours to produce. I feel the second half photos are better, so hopefully they will be worth the wait. -Orin The Nutshell On a night when Alison Bales was ineffective and Abby Waner was in deep foul trouble, it took two players who hadn't scored much recently to carry the day for Duke. Carrem Gay was huge at both ends of the court, cleaning up misses for scores and playing excellent defense. Wanisha Smith took up Waner's slack with the two biggest shots of the game. Lindsey Harding broke out of her three-game scoring slump, exploding for 18 points. Temple's physical play dictated the game's tempo and often seemed to disrupt Duke at both ends. Duke seemed ready to put Temple away on several occasions, but Temple's grit and toughness forced the Devils to repeatedly let them off the hook. Coach G noted that the Owls (and widebody center Lady Comfort in particular) got in Bales' head. It got so that Gail had to pull her from the game because Ali was so angry & flustered. That move proved to be key, because Duke went on a 9-0 that pushed their lead out to 14 points with four minutes to go. The Devils held the Owls scoreless for six minutes after Temple scored 20 points in the first ten minutes of the second half. Smith's energy was a big key in this game at both ends; she hit a three at the end of the first half after Temple closed to within 8 points and hit another three in the second half when the Owls closed to within 5. On the down side, Smith and Harding combined for 11 turnovers, which helped the Owls get 22 points off turnovers. In a game where points were hard to come by for both teams, Duke didn't value the ball at a time when they should have been milking the clock. Coach G noted that she was happy to play this kind of game against a team that wouldn't give up an inch and made them "fight for everything". On a night when the defending national champs went down, the word for the night was "survive and advance". Duke moves on to Greensboro on Saturday to play Rutgers, who will be looking for some redemption after the Devils thumped them in Jersey.

---

Copyright © 2007 DWHOOPS.COM (Orin A. Day, Durham, NC, USA.) All Rights Reserved.