There are the obvious reasons to cheer against a Duke basketball team, but for a long time, I’ve had my own special justification: Before she took a job as head coach of a program at the bottom of the ACC, Kara Lawson was a first-rate color commentator, and I selfishly wanted her back on my TV talking hoops. A mutual parting of ways, a sudden change of heart—anything would do! The private-school elites couldn’t get away with blocking access to a public resource for their own gain.
It turns out private-school elites can and do get away with that, a lot. The Kara Lawson For All movement suffered a blow at this past weekend’s ACC Tournament. On Sunday, as she celebrated the Duke women’s first conference championship since 2013, Lawson reflected on a long journey. The pandemic cut short her first year at Duke—the team decided to suspend the 2020-21 season after four games—and in subsequent seasons, the Blue Devils struggled in a tough conference. “Five years later,” Lawson said in her postgame interview. “We’re at the top.”
The ACC isn’t any less tough this season. To win the tournament, three-seed Duke had to take out Final Four favorite Notre Dame in the semifinals and then an NC State team with equally high postseason aspirations. That same Notre Dame squad bested the Blue Devils when they met in South Bend in February. In that game, you could see all there was to like about this Duke roster: They skew young and reliant on underclassmen, but what they lack in experience they make up for with intensity. Few other teams are athletic enough to disrupt Notre Dame, but that’s how Duke kept the opposing offense out of sorts in the first half, matching strength against strength.
You could also see all there was to fear about Notre Dame; the Irish locked in for the third quarter and pulled away to a 64-49 win. But in Saturday’s revenge game, Duke’s pressure never let up in a 61-56 victory. The Notre Dame halfcourt offense looked perfectly pedestrian. Starting forward Maddy Westbeld scored zero points in 27 minutes. After a third loss in five games, Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey lamented that her team “didn’t match [Duke’s] physicality,” and it was true. There are advantages to being young and hungry. What looked like a coronation for Notre Dame a few weeks ago has turned into an ill-timed stretch of soul-searching.
The Blue Devils may have felt their joy fading early on Sunday, when NC State star Aziaha James began the second quarter with five straight points to push the Wolfpack's lead to 14 in the ACC tournament final. The last time she faced Duke, she scored 36. The Wolfpack, Lawson said, have been “the standard in this league for the last five years,” and it looked like the standard might hold. But Duke had grown up since early February, when these teams last played, and leaned again on depth and rebounding hustle in the second half to win, 76-62.
The tournament MVP was delightful sophomore Oluchi Okananwa, the ACC Sixth Player of the Year and probably the best 5-foot-10 rebounder you’ll ever see. She’s a reminder that nose and effort go a long way on the boards. The angle’s not great in the video above, but the first clip is a replay of her leaping from a pile of players to grab a rebound and fly up the court in transition. She always seemed to spring right into the action, no matter where on the court it took place.
“We faced some of the best teams in the country three days in a row,” Lawson said at yesterday's postgame presser. Those teams—NC State, Notre Dame, and Louisville—happen to account for Duke’s last three regular-season losses. In the span of one weekend, the Blue Devils avenged them all. It's a different kind of good TV.
