Duke's full court press and half court traps have been a strength all season, but perhaps nobody was prepared for the first half onslaught unleashed by the Blue Devils tonight. Duke started off with a fierce full court press, and many times Temple could not get to midcourt before coughing it up. The ballgame could have been decided much more quickly than it was but for the fact that Duke's offense initially couldn't convert anything, missing their first eight shots from the field. Open jumpers, layups, you name it - but unlike the start of the Iowa game, the Devils were drawing fouls and getting to the line. Nobody scored for the first three and a half minutes until the Owls drew first blood with a Shanea Cotton jumper. Black responded by drawing Cotton's second foul on a stickback and her two free throws began an 11-0 Duke run over 2 minutes. During that run Temple turned it over five times, committed two fouls, burned a time out, violated the shot clock once (nearly three times if not for a jump ball reset with 1 second left and a bailout foul from Cheek with two seconds left), and took only one shot.

The Owls fought back to cut the gap to 13-8, but when Duke started draining jumpers it was all but over. A 10-0 run capped with totally wide open threes from Jasmine Thomas and Abby Waner was followed by an 18-6 stretch where Carrem Gay scored 5 on outside jumpers.

Shay Selby extends around Temple's Shanea Cotton to score during Duke's gamebreaking 28-6 first half outburst

Everybody was suddenly on fire for Duke - four players notched threes including Shay Selby (4-4 from the field in the half) - and Temple simply could not guard every option. In some situations Duke would press full court, or run a 3-1-1 half court trap, and none of Temple's guards could cope. When the dust settled at halftime, Duke led 47-22. Temple had turned the ball over 18 times, those turnovers facilitating as many Duke points as the Owls had scored themselves. 12 Owl miscues were Duke steals, of which 5 belonged to Waner who also had 5 assists. Remarkably Duke finished the half with 14 assists on just 17 baskets - two of the other three hoops were stickbacks, the third being a nice dribble-drive and pull-up by Chante Black. Duke shot 40.5% for the half, but 57% from long range (4-7), continuing the "quality over quantity" 3-point trend from the Providence game.

In the second half Duke's deep bench saw significant minutes and the press was pretty much called off, but defensive intensity was still there. Cotton scored the majority of Temple's second half points - mostly after Chante Black took her curtain call - leading all scorers with 18 and eventually fouling out Krystal Thomas. It was troubling that the Devils lost focus at the line in the second half, going a lackadaisical 4-12 there. Duke was also less patient in finding the best shot opportunities (only 6 assists on the 17 hoops) but in some cases that was a function of the lineup, and of Temple allowing better lanes for players to drive to the hoop. Duke continued to value the ball (just 7 turnovers each half), a welcome reversal of past trends in Cameron.

Duke's first ACC test will be Friday, as former Blue Devil star Katie Meier's Miami Hurricanes come calling on the second anniversary of DWHoops full coverage of Duke Women's Basketball.

We'll have more to come on Tuesday including box scores and a photo gallery