Duke Injury Report: Abby Waner suffered an ankle sprain in
practice this week and did not play tonight. She's in a boot and
likely will not play against UNC-G on Sunday either.
The
Nutshell
Duke won a choppy, defense-oriented game against a South Florida squad
that was outgunned to begin with and quickly fell into trouble. The 45
combined fouls prevented either club from getting into any kind of rhythm
on offense, and the result certainly favored Duke, a team that had
significant advantages in size and depth. The story of the game was the
dominance of Duke's frontline, which combined for 47 points, 24 rebounds
and 8 blocks. This was crucial on a night when Abby Waner was sitting out
the game with an ankle injury, Wanisha Smith hurt her hand in the second
half, and the team as a whole shot just 4-17 from three. Duke went deep
into its bench in applying constant full court pressure; this was
certainly Duke's most complete defensive performance to date. Duke forced
22 turnovers and turned them into 29 points. They got USF's star point
guard into immediate foul trouble and held her to 4-18 shooting, 4 assists
and 3 turnovers. There were a lot of unusual combinations on the floor
for Duke, which I think was one reason why the team seemed to have trouble
flowing at times. Of course, this particular difficulty will improve with
time, as everyone gets used to each other. That will also help with
Duke's other problems in this game: too many fouls, too many offensive
rebounds surrendered and too many easy shots missed. The good news is
that Duke had no shortage of effort or hustle. As long as they can learn
to translate that effort into greater efficiency, then this could be a
very interesting year.
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