The Duke women’s basketball team rebounded from their first loss in the ACC on Thursday at Miami with a 65-58 victory over rival North Carolina. The Blue Devils overcame 29 turnovers to win their 18th straight game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, where they have not lost an ACC game in over five years.
At Cameron on Senior Day, the Blue Devils blew a 12 point lead in the first half to be down 27-26 at halftime. The Tarheels got hot and Duke got sloppy.
UNC took a six point lead in the second half before Duke took control.
The Blue Devils forced 13 second half turnovers (for a total of 22) while UNC went absolutely cold from the field. Over a ten minute period in the second half, the Tarheels missed 19 straight shots and Duke went on a 22-2 run. It didn’t help that UNC is awful from the free throw line and only made 9-of-21.
The Blue Devils were led by freshman Alexis Jones, who scored a new career-high of 22 points. She went 11-of-12 from the free throw line. Elizabeth Williams scored 13 points and hauled in six rebounds, as she overcame first half foul trouble. Haley Peters scored ten points and hauled in seven rebounds.
Duke’s lone senior, Allison Vernerey, started and quickly got into foul trouble. However, she scored four points and hauled in six rebounds when the game was over. Check out the video to the bottom right of this page for Vernerey‘s final regular season home game.
Click HERE for the postgame press conference.
UNC also had foul trouble, as their top scorers were in foul trouble the whole game. Tierra Ruffin-Pratt scored 16 points, but was just 5-of-23 from the field. Xylina McDaniel, who is the favorite for ACC Freshman of the Year, was held to just three points on 1-of-8 shooting. Krista Gross recorded a double-double: ten points and 12 rebounds.
*Duke clinched the regular season title and thus have the number one seed in the upcoming ACC Tournament that begins on Thursday in Greensboro. Being one of the top four seeds gives them a first round bye. The Blue Devils will play Friday at 2pm ET against the winner of NC State-Clemson.
UNC had a bad day. They lost their hold on the two seed, as they lost to Duke and lost the coin toss tie breaker with Maryland. Now the three seed, they will play the winner of Virginia-Boston College on Friday at 8pm ET.
