Duke women’s basketball falls to Colorado in OT in second round of NCAA Tournament
Duke women’s basketball team watched its season come to an end in the same manner many of its losses occurred. The Blue Devils just couldn’t muster enough offense when it mattered.
No. 6 seed Colorado (25-8) closed the game on an 15-3 run between the end of regulation and overtime to defeat No. 3 seed Duke 61-53 in Cameron Indoor Stadium in the NCAA Tournament’s second round. The Buffaloes advance to the Sweet 16 in Seattle Region 4.
It was a bitter way to end a record-setting effort from Duke’s Celeste Taylor. She nearly posted a quadruple double with eight points, eight assists, 10 rebounds and 10 steals.
“Obviously, we wanted to go so much further, and we had it in us,” Taylor said. “But I mean, we had a great season. From last year to this year, you can’t even put it into words because we weren’t even picked to finish top five in this conference and we were playing to win the conference, the last game.”
Taylor was a big reason why the Blue Devils (26-7) were in a position to win the game despite falling behind 15-2 to start. It was Taylor that spurred a 7-0 sequence with Duke trailing 46-43 that gave them the lead in the fourth quarter.
She had an assist on an Elizabeth Balogun 3-pointer. She followed with a steal that led to another assist on the other end with a Vanessa de Jesus layup. Then Taylor was on the scoring end of a layup to put Duke up 50-46 with 1:41 remaining in regulation.
“I’ve been in this game a long time playing and coaching and I don’t know that ever had 5-10 guard do that,” Duke coach Kara Lawson said. “I mean, she’s a definition of like laying it out there and that’s what elite competitors do.”
Duke only had three baskets in the fourth quarter and Taylor was responsible for all of them. Colorado was largely to blame for why the Blue Devils encountered a prolonged scoring drought.
Because Duke’s Reigan Richardson helped spark a 12-2 run to take a 43-39 lead by making a pair of 3-pointers in the third quarter, Colorado associate head coach Toriano Towns decided to switch up the defense.
Buffs head coach J.R. Payne said Towns is responsible for their defensive calls, and he put them in a zone to start the fourth quarter. It may have worked better than they thought it would, as Duke went scoreless the first six minutes of the period.
“Our zone is not a typical zone, it’s very high pressure, very aggressive,” Colorado’s Jaylyn Sherrod said. “…We knew that we needed to do something to kind of throw their rhythm off. So when we went zone I think it really worked for us because it made them think and we don’t always run zone a lot, so it’s just something we always have in our back pocket.”
With Duke’s offense stymied, Colorado tied the game on a pair of Sherrod layups. Sherrod, who had 14 points, had a chance for a three-point play to give the Buffs the lead with 34 seconds left in regulation, but missed her free throw.
Duke’s Shayeann Day-Wilson had a chance to win the game on the Blue Devils’ final possession in regulation. She came off a pick for a clean look just left of the top of the key, but the shot was long. Day-Wilson finished just 1-for-9 and missed all four of her 3s.
“Against the zone, I felt like we could get a screen and get Shayeann going to her right,” Lawson said. “She could have taken a 2 or 3, it was her option, but I wanted to get her going and making a decision and I thought she got a fantastic -- it was a wide open look that she just missed. But that’s not obviously the reason we lost the game.”
As a team, the Blue Devils shot just 3-for-18 over the final 15 minutes of the game with the Buffs playing zone. That includes missing all seven of their field goal attempts in overtime of a game they shot just 31 percent from the field.
“We weren’t just knocking down shots, I mean, we’ve seen a zone before, we weren’t scared of it for sure,” said Richardson, who had 10 points and two of Duke’s five 3s. “It was just a matter of us not knocking down shots. Of course we got the looks that we wanted, just we weren’t knocking it down.”
Colorado was just good enough in the extra period, getting a jumper from Frida Formann and a pair of layups from Aaronette Vonleh to take a 56-51 lead and they never looked back.
Formann, who had 21 points and five 3-pointers in the Buffaloes’ first round win over Middle Tennessee State, was locked up most of the game by Taylor. Formann had nine points and was just 1-for-5 from 3.
The Buffs’ frontcourt, led by a pair of 6-foot-3 forwards in Vonleh and senior Quay Miller, got all the shots it wanted early on. When Duke fronted Vonleh in the post, the Buffs just threw over it. Vonleh finished with 12 points. When it pushed Miller out to the perimeter, she stepped back and make jumpers.
Miller, who scored 15 of her 17 points in the first half, was the reason why Colorado held off the Blue Devils. Five of Miller’s 14 rebounds came on the offensive end and helped the Buffs ourscore Duke 16-6 in second chance points.
This story was originally published March 20, 2023 at 11:38 PM.