Duke women’s basketball repeats as ACC champions in OT thriller over Louisville
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Duke wins 10th ACC title, back-to-back champs for first time since 2010-11.
- Forced 10-second violation and five-point possession swung game before OT.
- Riley Nelson’s corner 3 in OT sealed 70-65 win; NCAA seed revealed Mar. 15.
A 10-second violation was the first domino, and the last one was title number 10.
Duke women’s basketball looked down and out late in the ACC Championship Game against Louisville, losing the lead after a stretch of over six minutes without a made field goal.
But trailing by four with under a minute to go, Duke’s defense forced a 10-second violation, then came up with a miraculous five-point possession to surge into the lead before eventually outlasting the Cardinals 70-65 after five total lead changes across the final minute of regulation plus overtime.
“That game had a lot of chapters,” Duke head coach Kara Lawson said. “It was wild and it had its ups and downs, but we just stayed steady. I’m so proud of so many different performances.”
The victory clinched Duke’s (24-8) tenth ACC Tournament title in program history, tying Maryland for the most in tournament history, and marked back-to-back titles for the first time since 2010-2011.
Riley Nelson delivered the dagger in overtime, a backbreaking corner 3-pointer that all but coated the trophy in blue and white. Louisville (27-7) elected not to foul trailing by two with a five second difference between the shot and game clocks, and the Blue Devils took the timer all the way down before Nelson canned a wide open triple in the corner to make it 70-65 with just a few ticks remaining.
On a day where Nelson shot just 4-of-14 from the floor and 3-of-8 from deep, her timing could not have been better on the two biggest shots of the weekend.
“We were at halftime and I told Riley you better keep shooting the ball,” point guard Taina Mair said. “One’s going to fall, two’s going to fall, three are going to fall and it’s going to start going for her. When she lined it up, I knew it was money.”
Delaney Thomas tied the game on a layup with 4.7 seconds left and Taina Mair officially secured another five minutes of basketball by blocking Tajianna Roberts’ would-be championship winning 3-point attempt in the dying embers of regulation, all stemming from the forced turnover in the backcourt.
The defensive stop breathed a little bit of oxygen back into the flailing Blue Devils, the offense still needed to take advantage. Thomas hit a tough layup in traffic through contact to snap the field goal drought and make it a 57-55 game.
Thomas missed the ensuing free throw, but Toby Fournier snagged the biggest offensive rebound of Duke’s season. Fournier kicked the ball back out to reset the possession and it eventually found its way to Nelson, who pocketed a 3-pointer to give the Blue Devils a 58-57 lead before Louisville scored the next three points and set the stage for Thomas’ overtime-forcing layup.
“Delaney has this unique ability to meet your needs,” Lawson said. “In big games she is ready to meet whatever the team needs in that moment. That’s not new to us, I can rattle off a ton of games in her career where she has just met our needs and come up with big play after big play.”
Late heroics were only fitting for this particular Duke team off the back of this season. The Blue Devils tumbled all through non-conference play, starting the season with just a 3-6 overall record and four of the six losses by double-digits.
Since then Lawson’s team has won 21 of 23, swept both the ACC regular season and tournament championships for the first time since 2012-13 and could end up as high as a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
“We blocked out as much as we could and we just doubled down on each other,” Lawson said. “Our belief in one another, who we know ourselves to be and who I know them [players to be] and every day just approached it as let’s get better every day. I love this life lesson for them. For the rest of their life, any time they have adversity, I hope this season serves as a lesson for them that they can persevere through it and there’s greater things on the other side of it.”
Duke will learn its NCAA Tournament path in exactly one week. The selection show is scheduled for 8 p.m. on March 15 with coverage on ESPN. The first round is March 20-21, with Duke almost guaranteed to host opening weekend games at Cameron Indoor Stadium
This story was originally published March 8, 2026 at 3:32 PM.