The Replay: UNC women upend Duke in basketball; Canes work OT; Bulls retain manager
UNC looked more like a Top 25 team than Duke on this night.
In a prelude to next week’s men’s rivalry matchup, UNC and Duke met in women;s basketball on Thursday. Duke was without head coach kara Lawson, who entered health safety protocols Thursday afternoon before the game, but with the way UNC played — even at Cameron Indoor — it may not have mattered much.
Alyssa Ustby scored a game-high 20 points for the Tar Heels finished with a season-low five turnovers to rattle Duke, 78-62, in a rivalry matchup in Durham.
Carlie Littlefield’s four-point play gave UNC a 19-18 at the end of the first quarter. Then the Tar Heels took over in the second.
Carolina converted eight Duke turnovers in the period into 15 points. When Kennedy Todd-Williams drilled a jumper at the buzzer, the Heels took their biggest lead of the game into halftime 47-26.
Duke’s Shayeann Day-Wilson, who averages a team-best 12 points per game, shot just 3-for-16 from the field and had 10. Miela Goodchild, Duke’s 40 percent 3-point shooter, missed her first seven attempts from behind the arc. She made three in the fourth quarter, but by then it was too late.
Overtime thrillers
The Hurricanes rebounded earlier this week after a tough loss on the road the previous weekend to post a key OT win over the Western Conference-leading Vegas Golden Knights.
Sebastian Aho took a feed in the low slot from Andrei Svechnikov after Svechnikov forced a turnover during the 3-on-3 overtime. Aho slid the puck into the cage for a 4-3 win.
Thursday, the Canes worked overtime again, but this time they needed a bit more time, so they went into the shootout. Svechnikov scored the lone shootout goal for either team to lift the Canes to the win. It was the first shootout of the season — and first in 56 games overall — for Carolina.
The Canes capped their unofficial first half of the season with home games late Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
Bulls retain skipper
The reigning Triple-A National Champion Durham Bulls announced this week that Brady Williams will return for his third season as manager of the Bulls. Joining Williams on the coaching staff are pitching coach Brian Reith, hitting coach Will Bradley and bench coach Reinaldo Ruiz.
“We’re thrilled to welcome back Brady after the Bulls won every single title possible last season,” Bulls Vice President of Baseball Operations Mike Birling said in a news release. “We look forward to working with him and the rest of his staff for what should be another exciting season in 2022.”
Williams, the 2021 Triple-A East co-Manager of the Year, led the Bulls to a minor league-best 86-44 record last season, the highest win percentage over a full season in Durham franchise history, en route to claiming the Triple-A National Championship and winning the Triple-A Final Stretch. In his two years at the helm for the Bulls, the 41-year-old has compiled a 161-108 record after leading Durham to the Governors’ Cup Finals in his initial campaign in 2019.
