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From early doubts to 6 straight wins, Duke women's basketball finds form
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- From early doubts to 6 straight wins, Duke women's basketball finds form
DURHAM, N.C. — The second quarter had just started and Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo called out to her teammates: "Lock down!"
What happened next against Duke wasn't what the Fighting Irish star envisioned. Beginning with a steal and driving layup from Blue Devils sophomore Toby Fournier, the Blue Devils went on a 17-8 run to take an 18-point lead. Duke went on to their sixth consecutive victory, 82-68, over Notre Dame Sunday at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
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All five starters scored in double figures in the signature victory for the Blue Devils.
"A big-time win for us," Duke coach Kara Lawson said. "Our starting five, I thought they really answered the call, played with the right amount of competitiveness, and just made big plays throughout the game. And being able to play with a lead against a really good team is not an easy thing to do. Proud of how we finished."
As conference play begins, Lawson's Blue Devils look more like the team picked as preseason favorites to win the ACC and a lot less like the one that began the season 3-6 and was quickly booted out of the national rankings.
Sometimes, numbers can be deceiving. After the Blue Devils piled up defeats early in the season, many wrote them off. What the doubters ignored was Duke was losing to some pretty good competition.
Lawson, now in her fifth season as coach, has never been one to schedule cupcakes. She seeks multiple Power 4 opponents and isn't afraid to play on the road, even at strong mid-major programs. If one measures strength of schedule by the average NET rating of opponents, Duke has played the toughest schedule in the country with a mark of 16.7. The average win percentage of Duke's opponents is 67.2, which is second nationally, according to HerHoopStats .
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Duke endured some absolutely abysmal losses in November and December that had critics questioning whether Lawson was the right pick to lead Team USA into the 2026 FIBA World Cup and 2028 Olympics. The season began with an excusable loss in Paris, France, to Baylor.
Then the Blue Devils endured a historic defeat to West Virginia in which the Mountaineers played the entire second half with five players following ejections after a scuffle. Next, Duke lost at South Florida for the second straight season and followed up by looking less than competitive against South Carolina and UCLA in Las Vegas. Finally, the Blue Devils suffered the loss at home to LSU in the ACC-SEC Challenge.
Lawson always saw the bigger picture. She wanted her team tested early. She wanted them to face adversity. She wanted to figure out their strengths and weaknesses before ACC play began. She wanted to have time to make adjustments.
And she and Duke have done that. Lineups have shifted and players have accepted new roles. With that, wins have come.
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"Results are a funny thing, because it can color your whole mindset. And what I've tried to stay focused on as a coach is, what am I actually seeing on the film? Where are the mistakes and how do we correct them? Win, lose, whatever it is, stay focused in that," Lawson said. "Even in the midst of losing games, there were micro-growths that were happening with each player. … It kept me confident in it, even though, you know, from the outside, people will make you think the sky is falling."
The first big change was inserting Riley Nelson into the starting lineup over Jadyn Donovan. That first happened in Duke's ACC-opening win at Virginia Tech on Dec. 7. The Blue Devils haven't lost since.
And Nelson — who played 16 games as a freshman at Maryland in the 2023-24 season before tearing her ACL, which forced her to miss all of last year — didn't play all that well in Blacksburg, shooting 1-of-7 from the floor. But Lawson stuck with her. Since then, she's scored in double figures in five straight games, averaging 14.8 points, 4.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game.
"You can see all the potential and you want it to happen overnight," Lawson said of Nelson. "She has a chance to be a really good player in a Duke uniform, and she knows I'm going to push her to do that.
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"Riley is a critical piece for us, and you can see her coming on now. Her ability to knock down the three point shot is critical for our offense."
Taina Mair has also emerged as Duke's bus driver. The 5-foot-9 senior guard led Duke in assists the past two seasons and was an All-ACC selection at Boston college as a freshman, ranking eighth in the nation in assists per game. But this season, Lawson challenged Mair to take on more of a scorer's mentality from the point guard position.
It's a role she's excelled at, scoring 15.2 points per game during this six-game winning streak for the Blue Devils. Against Notre Dame, she shot a career-best 4-of-4 from 3 and finished with 23 points, six rebounds and six assists.
Mair is still dishing the ball out, finding Fournier multiple times streaking down the lane for easy rim-running baskets. She's averaging 5.2 assists per game this season, the most in her three years at Duke.
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"That's why sometimes just looking at someone's stats and coming up with a conclusion about whether they had a down year or they took a step back — Mair never took a step back. She was doing what was necessary to win," Lawson said. "Now, we don't have as much depth on the wing. Now, we need her scoring. We need you to take double digit field goal attempts a game and go get it."
One could argue the Blue Devils' schedule got easier in mid-December. But of Duke's six wins during this surge, four have come against ACC opponents, and the other two came against consistent mid-major powers in Belmont and South Dakota State, who combined for 56 wins last season. And half of Duke's wins during this streak were in true road environments.
The Blue Devils' comfortable victory over a ranked Notre Dame team could serve as proof of concept, signaling they are one of the top teams in the ACC.
Duke has adjusted, adapted and improved. Typically, that's something for which coaches get earn credit. But Lawson deflects the praise and pushes it towards her players.
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"I do feel like our team never lost their spirit, that we stayed really connected, and we will reap the benefits of that at some point," she said. "Our focus has been good, our chemistry has been good. You wouldn't know what our record was if you just walked into practice. And so when that's right, I feel like the results will take care of themselves."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Win over Notre Dame proves Duke women's basketball turnaround is real
