Duke struggled in a bumpy opening month. Kara Lawson’s 21st-ranked Blue Devils have regrouped
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — It wasn’t that long ago that Duke looked lost, a preseason Atlantic Coast Conference favorite opening at 3-6 and reeling amid a demanding first-month schedule.
Yet Kara Lawson’s belief didn’t wane.
“I felt we were always good, or we were going to be good,” Lawson said. “When I say we were going to be good, that meant the result would start to turn.”
It sure has.
The Blue Devils have won 10 straight games, a run that includes an 8-0 start in league play and a return to the AP Top 25 this week at No. 21. And they have built some of the cohesion and consistency that showed in last year’s run to the ACC Tournament title followed by a trip to the NCAA Elite Eight.
“I’m more proud that they — the players themselves — stuck together,” Lawson said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Because I can tell you this: There’s way more teams in the NCAA that would’ve folded or broken apart or played below their potential after what we went through.
“They had every reason to say, ‘Ah, this ain’t the year, we’ve just got too much going against us.’ … And they didn’t. They just came into practice every day and said, ‘I’m going to get better.’”
What’s working
That approach has gotten Duke back on course, both as an ACC contender and potential host for March Madness’ opening weekend. The Blue Devils (13-6) enter Saturday’s game at Pittsburgh — moved up a day due to an approaching winter storm — sitting alongside No. 8 Louisville atop the league standings.
Defense has been a calling-card identity for Duke under its sixth-year coach, who in September was named head coach for the U.S. women’s team for the 2028 Olympics. Yet the offense has notably taken a step forward to go with it.
In ACC play, the Blue Devils are among the league leaders in scoring (fourth, 78.25), shooting percentage (third, 45.7%), 3-point percentage (third, 35.8%) and assist-to-turnover ratio (second, 1.29).
By comparison, Duke had averaged 65.52 points on 42.5% shooting, including 33.4% on 3s, with a 0.92 assist-to-turnover ratio in league regular-season games for the previous three seasons combined.
That bump has come while adjusting to multiple injuries, notably with third-year starter Jadyn Donovan missing the past month since a hard fall against South Dakota State, touted freshman Emilee Skinner playing just three games and senior reserve Emma Koabel lost to an offseason knee injury.
There were also changes such as playing post forwards Toby Fournier and Delaney Thomas more together. Or guard Riley Nelson returning to action after missing last season due to a knee injury suffered before she transferred from Maryland.
“I just think that at some point for us, it clicked,” said Nelson, whose move into the starting lineup coincided with the 10-game run. ”And we all started competing together, with each other, trying to find this team’s identity … and how that kind of all meshes.
“It just took us a minute to kind of figure that out.”
Regrouping
Duke opened the season as the favorite to follow last year’s first ACC Tournament title since 2013 with another, along with carrying a No. 7 ranking in the preseason AP Top 25.
A bumpy start raised eyebrows.
The Blue Devils fell to No. 14 Baylor in the Paris opener. They lost to No. 22 West Virginia, which played the second half with five players due to ejections after the teams had to be separated. They fell at South Florida.
Next came lopsided losses to No. 2 South Carolina and a third-ranked UCLA team playing without star Lauren Betts, followed by a Dec. 4 home loss to No. 6 LSU in the ACC/SEC Challenge that dropped Duke to an unthinkable 3-6.
Lawson took a largely positive tone after the LSU loss, pointing to seeing growth from her team and praising its competitive fight. Senior Ashlon Jackson tried to stay positive, too, even while acknowledging Duke was “in the mud right now.”
“It felt like the world was ending,” Jackson said this week with a chuckle.
Now?
“We know that going into March, going into February, we’re going to be the team that has been through any and everything,” Jackson said. “And on the flip side of that, we know that we can get through it.”
Same message
Little has changed for Lawson, though.
The 44-year-old coach who played for Pat Summitt at Tennessee before a long WNBA career relentlessly talks about dismissing outside expectations or opinions when working toward goals. That’s been true in good times, like Duke getting within a game of last year’s Final Four, and it remained the case amid trouble, too.
Instead, Lawson focused on what she saw on film. In practices. In internal analytics data. It all told her the Blue Devils were better than their early record.
“What allows me to be optimistic like that is I knew what I was seeing,” she said. “And then my job was to relay what I was seeing to them. My job is to be a truthteller for the players. … They’re smart, I don’t BS them. I wasn’t trying to trick them: ‘Hey, let me trick them to make them think we’re good until we get good.’
“No, we were good. So I had to explain why we were good, and what the numbers were saying.”
In that regard, maybe it’s as simple as the results have finally caught up with its process.
“Now I think we’ve figured out how we need to play,” Lawson said. “That doesn’t mean we’ll win every game the rest of the season. But we have started to play some really good complementary basketball.”
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