DWHoops Photo by Orin Day

Bridgette Mitchell delivers what Van Chancellor called a dagger of a shot, tying the game for the thirteenth time.

In his postgame press conference, LSU coach Van Chancellor noted "Sometimes when you play at home you want to win at home in front of your fans and it puts a lot of pressure on you." To a certain degree, I think that was the case in Duke's tight victory over LSU in the last game of the year in Cameron Indoor Stadium. That said, the Bengal Tigers presented Duke with as disciplined a defensive challenge as they had faced all year. LSU played much bigger than their listed size and outrebounded the Devils in the first half, 15-11. LSU took an early lead thanks to their creative use of screens against Duke's man-to-man defense. As Chancellor put it, "...when we were in man, we were running a little play we have and we were running our motion post exchange and (Allison) Hightower was getting one shot after the other."

Duke's switch from man-to-man to zone, and mixing up the zone with a 1-2-2 press, was the key to the Devils' comeback. Keturah Jackson summed it up by noting "I think [LSU is] a very good penetrating team, so the zone helped us to pack down the lane. [We had] just a lot of communication in the zone and in defense. When you have a player like [Hightower], we just have to talk a lot, and that's what got the job done for us." Indeed, LSU's leading scorer Allison Hightower scored 11 points in the first seven minutes of the game against Duke's man-to-man defense and only 8 points the rest of the way. For Duke, it was the seniors who made a number of key plays. Sinking a number of what Chancellor described as "dagger shots", Bridgette Mitchell finished with 12 points. KJ had 8 points and made a number of key hustle plays. Joy Cheek struggled for 37 minutes but had several huge plays at both ends down the stretch. In the end, Duke's depth and size carried the day and propelled Duke into the Sweet Sixteen, helping to ease the pain of an ignominious finish a year ago.

Duke Blue Devils Team Box Score

PTS FG FG % 3FG 3FG % FT FT% A O-D-REB BLK STL TO PF 1st 25 11-26 42.3 1-6 16.7 2-4 50.0 2 3-8-11 2 8 8 7 2nd 35 12-26 46.2 0-4 0.0 11-12 91.7 3 8-13-21 1 5 11 9 TOT 60 23-52 44.2 1-10 10.0 13-16 81.3 5 11-21-32 3 13 19 16

#7 LSU Team Box Score PTS FG FG % 3FG 3FG % FT FT% A O-D-REB BLK STL TO PF 1st 25 11-21 52.4 1-3 33.3 2-2 100.0 8 2-13-15 2 3 13 4 2nd 27 9-27 33.3 1-4 25.0 8-8 100.0 5 5-7-12 2 6 9 11 TOT 52 20-48 41.7 2-7 28.6 10-10 100.0 13 7-20-27 4 9 22 15 Please support DWHoops with a site membership today! Click Here to Learn More