3 Seed UConn Huskies 7 Seed Duke Blue Devils 31-5 22-11
Saturday, March 30th, 2024
Time: 8:00
Portland, Oregon
TV: ESPN
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Prior Match ups
DUKE | UCONN
UCONN LEADS 13-3
H: 3-1 | A: 5-0 | N: 5-2
01/11/80 UConn 81, Duke 69 Durham, N.C.
12/09/88 Duke 83, UConn 69 Richmond, Va.
11/13/98 #3 UConn 104, #4 Duke 74 San Jose, Calif.
02/01/03 #2 UConn 77, #1 Duke 65 Durham, N.C.
01/03/04 #4 Duke 68, #1 UConn 67 Hartford, Conn.
03/28/06 #4 Duke 63, #8 UConn 61 (OT) Bridgeport, Conn.
11/25/07 #2 UConn 74, #9 Duke 48 U.S. Virgin Islands
01/18/10 #1 UConn 81, #7 Duke 48 Durham, N.C.
01/31/11 #2 UConn 87, #3 Duke 51 Storrs, Conn.
03/29/11 #1 UConn 75, #6 Duke 40 Philadelphia, Pa.
01/30/12 #3 UConn 61, #5 Duke 45 Durham, N.C.
01/21/13 #3 UConn 79, #4 Duke 49 Storrs, Conn.
12/17/13 #1 UConn 83, #2 Duke 61 Durham, N.C.
12/29/14 #2 UConn 83, #10 Duke 52 Hartford, Conn.
03/24/18 #1 UConn 72, #20 Duke 59 Albany, N.Y.
11/25/22 #3 UConn 78, Duke 50 Portland, Ore.
UConn has had the advantage the last 10 games winning all of them. But the game before that streak was a killer for me. It was an Elite Eight game where the Huskies lost in overtime to the Blue Devils. Alison Bales had 15 points, 13 rebounds, and eight blocked shots as top-seeded Duke got a defensive stop on the final possession of overtime to escape with a win in the Bridgeport Regional final and advance to the Final Four. It was one of the few NCAA games I was able to attend. My issue with Duke is more about the men's teams. But that is a different story. Laettner ring a bell?
Duke Overview
Like I said with Syracuse, Duke has had an up and down season, going 19-10 in the regular season, 1-1 in the ACC tournament and then winning their first two games in the NCAA tournament to get to the Sweet Sixteen and earn a match up with UConn.
One way to look at their season is to note the games they played against teams that were ranked when they played. Games against weaker teams don't tell us much.
Stanford lost 82-79 OT, South Carolina lost 77-61, Louisville lost 61-44, Virginia Tech won 63-46, NC State lost 72-57, Florida State won 88-46, Virgina Tech lost 61-56, Notre Dame lost 70-62, Syracuse won 58-45, NC State won 69-58, NC State lost 54-51, and the most important game to date Ohio State won 75-63.
That's 5-7 against ranked teams.
But as a friend once told me, the teams in the Sweet Sixteen are probably playing their best basketball of the season. And Duke played their best game against Ohio State.
Comparative Team Statistics
(leader in bold)
UConn Duke
80.7 PPG 68.9
56.7 Defensive PPG 58.0
24.0 Scoring Margin 10.9
50.0 Field Goal % 44.6
35.5 Defensive FG% 36.9
36.6 Three Point % 32.1
28.2 Defensive 3PT% 32.0
75.2 Free Throw % 76.8
38.9 Rebounds/game 38.2
6.5 Rebounding Margin 6.4
19.7 Assists per game 14.7
12.9 Turnover per game 16.9
1.5 Assists/TO ratio .9
10.0 Steals per game 8.5
3.9 Blocks per game 5.7
UCONN
The player and coaches names for both teams
are clickable to see their Bios
are clickable to see their Bios
UConn Starters
UConn Injuries
OUT FOR THE SEASON
ACL
Achilles Injury
Head and Neck Injury
DUKE
Duke Bench
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Game Analysis
Duke is an interesting team. They have 9 players with double digit mintes and even in close games, they pretty much use them all. Most teams shrink their lineup so their best players get more minutes.
The PPG averages show that. They really spread it out. Six different players have lead the team in scoring in their games. Let's look at their players.
Duke Starters
5'11" junior Reigan Jefferson is the leading scorer at 12.4 PPG in 28 MPG. She transferred to Duke after her freshman season with Georgia. She is not a very good ball handler with 53 assists and 85 turnovers. She shoots 44.2% from the field and 31.7% on threes. In the tournament she was clearly their best player as she has scored 28 and 25 points. She was 21-36 from the field for 58% and her three point shooting was on fire going 5-8 in these two games. Talk about taking it up a notch. Duke clearly will look for her to contining her high scoring ways.
Second on the team in scoring at 9.9 PPG in a team leading 30.3 MPG is 5'9" sophomore guard Taina Meir. This is her first season at Duke after tranferring from Boston College where is was on the All-ACC freshman team. She is the lead guard on the team averaging 3.7 APG. She is leading the team in assists so far in the tournament with seven. Meir did not have a very good shooting season, going 37.5% from the field and only 28% on threes. She is having an even tougher shooting tournament going 1-16 from the field and and 1-9 on threes. She did get to the line 9 times in their first round game making 8 of them. She was scoreless in the second round game.
Ashlon Jackson is a 6' sophomore guard. Jackson saw limited action her freshman season before earning a starting stop this year. She averaged 9.3 PPG in 29.1 MPG. She shoots 38% from the field and leads the team in three point attempts with 149 total. She hits them at a solid 36.2% but only 38.7% from the field. She is the second best scorer for the toutnament with 14 and 13 points in the two games. She was hot from deep going 4-7 and 5-10 for the tournament.
Kennedy Brown, a 6'6" senior center is the only senior on the team and their main size in the starting lineup. She only plays 24.5 MPG, scoring 8.3 PPG and grabbing 5.5 RPG. She, of course, leads the team in blocked shots with 43 or 1.3 BPG. Brown joined Duke prior to the 2022-23 season after transferring from Oregon State. In her two tournament games she averaged 29 MPG, scored 19 total points, 12 total rebounds and 6 total assists.
Jadyn Donovan is a 6' freshman guard/forward. Based on what I've seen, she is more a forward than a guard. She averages 6.3 PPG, 5.7 RPG in her 22.3 MPG. Donovan is second on the team in rebounding and blocks. She plays bigger than her height, similar to Aubrey's game. She was ranked third in the ESPN HoopGurlz as a 5 star 97 grade player. A great recruit for Lawson. I'm not sure I'm seen a more buff player. She is struggling in the NCAA tournament so far. She has scored a total of 8 points in the two games, zero against Ohio State. She was in constant foul trouble limiting her to 13 minutes against the Buckeyes. Her strength is her strength as she is averaging 7 rebounds in 18 MPG.
Duke Bench
Lawson plays four players off the bench and it seems like she works them in and out of the game depending on how the game is developing. Most good coaches do that.
Freshman Oluchi Okanawa is the third leading scorer on the team. The 5'10" guard is averaging 9.3 PPG and leads the team in rebounding at 6.2 per game. Her terrific 2022 summer sessions sent her rankings skyrocketing from being unranked to No. 27 in the 2023 class. She is just a terrific rebounding guard. She had 8 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists in 22 minutes in the first NCAA game and only played 13 minutes against Ohio State adding 4 points and 2 rebounds.
Delaney Thomas, a 6'3" forward, fills out the trifecta of ranked players in Duke's terrific 2023 class. Thomas was ranked 29th in that class. This season she averaged 5.1 points and 3.4 rebounds in 16.8 MPG. Thomas had a terrific game against Ohio State after a tought first NCAA tournament against Richmond. She had 8 points and 8 rebounds in 27 minutes.
Sophomore guard, 5'11" Emma Koabel played only four games in her freshman season but this year had a busier role for Duke coming off the bench. She averaged 12 MPG, 3.1 PPG and 1.3 RPG. She has scored a total of 3 points in the two NCAA tournament games with 2 assists in 26 minutes.
Last player in the rotation is Camilla Emsbo, a 6'5" graduate student transfer from Yale. She was injured and did not play in 2022-23. In 2021-22 Emsbo was unanimous 1st team Ivy League. She is not getting much minutes in the tournament with 7 and 10 minutes with a total of 4 points. Interestingly, she had 4 blocks in 10 minutes against Ohio State.
So, that's the Duke rotation. They start one senior, one junior, two sophomore and a freshman start and off the bench they play two freshmen, a sophomore and a grad student that doesn't see much time. It's a very young team compared who UConn has been playing so far in the tournament. It makes a difference. The pressure gets more intense as the teams move on to the next round. And getting to the Elite Eight is a challenge for any team.
I'm looking for UConn to put extreme pressure on the ball. Duke has a negative assists/turnover ratio and the Huskies will take advantage of that. And you can bet that Nika's assisgnment will be to shut down their leading scorer Richardson. Both are the same size so it won't be Nika chasing around a little guard like the Syracuse game. This match up is right up her alley.
Duke is not the most proficient offensive team. They live by their defense and it's very good. They are 40th in points allowed per game. However, the other defensive stats like shooting percentage, forced turnovers and other metrics just don't show that Duke is an exceptional defensive team.
However, they haven't played a team as good on the offensive side so far this tournament. We shall see if they can slow down Paige, Aaliyah, Ashlynn.
Final Prediction
The more I loked into this game the more I liked the match up from a UConn perspective. Having a relatively inexperiennced team against a team with three dominant upper classmen does not bode well for Duke.
I just can't see Duke scoring more than 60 points in this game. They could be hard pressed to break 50 against a terrific UConn defense. And as good as Duke has been playing defense, Paige and company will break the 70 point barrier.
UConn by 18+.
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