Preview:
We play Duke Sunday at noon in a game that will be televised on ABC.
We need to get to know Duke, given that Duke is a perennial leading WBB team in the ACC, which will be our conference next year. We will be playing them regularly in future years.
Duke is coached by Kara Lawson, who should be familiar to Stanford fans. She was a color commentator for ESPN for many years and broadcast many of our games, and before that she played for Pat Summit against us. She left broadcasting and took over Duke in the midst of COVID and now starts her fourth year. Lawson is a defensive-oriented coach, and Duke was one of the top defenses in the country last season. Her goal is to contest every shot and to have more energy on defense than the opposing team can muster on offense, and wear the opponent down. Indiana was not a strong defensive team, so Duke will give us our first test against a strong defense--and we can expect many more teams later in the season that will be more Duke-like and less Indiana-like.
Last year Duke was 26-7 and lost to Colorado in the 2nd round of the NCAAs. This year Duke is 3-1 and is unranked, although it was “among the others receiving votes” and thus could be considered 30th. But those rankings were when it was 3-0, before it lost to Davidson Thursday night. To put it mildly, that loss was disappointing to Duke fans. Kara’s presser indicated that she was disappointed in her team’s effort, but she also took some responsibility for leaving Reigan Richardson in the game after she picked up a quick foul. Richardson, their leading scorer, then picked up a quick second foul and had to sit. She wound up with only 6 points in the game. Duke also was only 2/13 from three point range and Davidson was 9/18. That enormous differential in three point shots enabled Davidson to prevail 69-62. In their prior game Duke managed to squeak by Columbia 66-62, so it is clear that their season is not starting on as happy a note as ours has.
Duke carries just 11 players on its roster. One, Kennedy Brown, is familiar to us. She is a 6’6” senior who transferred from Oregon State two years ago. Last year she started all 33 games for Duke and averaged 7 points and 5 rebounds. This year she has had two games where she wracked up 4 fouls, so that is something to watch.
But other than Kennedy Brown, Duke seems to be very much a guard-oriented team. Paye mentioned in the Cal Poly chalk talk that the two teams had some similarities, and while Duke no doubt has much more skilled and somewhat larger players, their starters (other than Brown) are all guards, being 5’11”, 5’9”, 6’0”, and 6’0”, with the lead off the bench being 5’10”.
The Duke leading scorer is 5’11” junior guard Reigan Richardson. Roughly half of all her baskets are treys, which she makes at at 36% clip this year. Last year, though, Richardson was only 23% from three point range, so it is unclear if she has make a dramatic improvement or whether the limited number of attempts this year just make the numbers unreliable.
Duke has a major talent who comes off the bench, 5’10” guard Oluchi Okananwa. She averages 10 points and leads the team with 7 rebounds—quite impressive for a bench player. Lawson calls her “my highest effort player” but let slip in the press conference that “she is only 5’8”. Hmmm. Another team that exaggerates player heights on the stat sheets. But Duke has 5 players who all average around 10 points, and none who average a lot more than 10. On paper, it looks like a bevy of swarming guards circling around Kennedy Brown, all scoring more or less interchangeably.
The Duke loss to Davidson is available on ESPN replay and makes for interesting viewing:
https://www.espn.com/watch/player/_/id/6...64e0e23c1f
Among other things you will learn by watching that game is that Davidson's Rosy Deegan, a 5th year Aussie shooting guard from Perth, and who had 18 points in the win, is completely blind in her left eye, leading to an unorthodox (but highly effective) shot. You would think that a three point shooting specialist would need depth perception, but obviously she has overcome that.
My guess is that Stanford’s emphasis going in is going to be defensive, to keep Duke from recovering its three point shooting after the Davidson debacle. Our perimeter defense has been somewhat flawed so far this year. It was nice to beat Indiana, but we did give them a lot of open perimeter shots—we were fortunate that more of them did not go down. We don’t want to let Duke get its three point shooting back on track. In addition, I am sure Tara and the coaches know how to defend Kennedy Brown—and Cam in particular will have memories of playing her. Avoiding fouls will be important, given that Brown tends to pick up quite a few herself. On offense, our players are going to be forced out of their normal systems and patterns. It won't be comfortable for them. But it will be excellent preparation for the likes of Colorado et al.
We play Duke Sunday at noon in a game that will be televised on ABC.
We need to get to know Duke, given that Duke is a perennial leading WBB team in the ACC, which will be our conference next year. We will be playing them regularly in future years.
Duke is coached by Kara Lawson, who should be familiar to Stanford fans. She was a color commentator for ESPN for many years and broadcast many of our games, and before that she played for Pat Summit against us. She left broadcasting and took over Duke in the midst of COVID and now starts her fourth year. Lawson is a defensive-oriented coach, and Duke was one of the top defenses in the country last season. Her goal is to contest every shot and to have more energy on defense than the opposing team can muster on offense, and wear the opponent down. Indiana was not a strong defensive team, so Duke will give us our first test against a strong defense--and we can expect many more teams later in the season that will be more Duke-like and less Indiana-like.
Last year Duke was 26-7 and lost to Colorado in the 2nd round of the NCAAs. This year Duke is 3-1 and is unranked, although it was “among the others receiving votes” and thus could be considered 30th. But those rankings were when it was 3-0, before it lost to Davidson Thursday night. To put it mildly, that loss was disappointing to Duke fans. Kara’s presser indicated that she was disappointed in her team’s effort, but she also took some responsibility for leaving Reigan Richardson in the game after she picked up a quick foul. Richardson, their leading scorer, then picked up a quick second foul and had to sit. She wound up with only 6 points in the game. Duke also was only 2/13 from three point range and Davidson was 9/18. That enormous differential in three point shots enabled Davidson to prevail 69-62. In their prior game Duke managed to squeak by Columbia 66-62, so it is clear that their season is not starting on as happy a note as ours has.
Duke carries just 11 players on its roster. One, Kennedy Brown, is familiar to us. She is a 6’6” senior who transferred from Oregon State two years ago. Last year she started all 33 games for Duke and averaged 7 points and 5 rebounds. This year she has had two games where she wracked up 4 fouls, so that is something to watch.
But other than Kennedy Brown, Duke seems to be very much a guard-oriented team. Paye mentioned in the Cal Poly chalk talk that the two teams had some similarities, and while Duke no doubt has much more skilled and somewhat larger players, their starters (other than Brown) are all guards, being 5’11”, 5’9”, 6’0”, and 6’0”, with the lead off the bench being 5’10”.
The Duke leading scorer is 5’11” junior guard Reigan Richardson. Roughly half of all her baskets are treys, which she makes at at 36% clip this year. Last year, though, Richardson was only 23% from three point range, so it is unclear if she has make a dramatic improvement or whether the limited number of attempts this year just make the numbers unreliable.
Duke has a major talent who comes off the bench, 5’10” guard Oluchi Okananwa. She averages 10 points and leads the team with 7 rebounds—quite impressive for a bench player. Lawson calls her “my highest effort player” but let slip in the press conference that “she is only 5’8”. Hmmm. Another team that exaggerates player heights on the stat sheets. But Duke has 5 players who all average around 10 points, and none who average a lot more than 10. On paper, it looks like a bevy of swarming guards circling around Kennedy Brown, all scoring more or less interchangeably.
The Duke loss to Davidson is available on ESPN replay and makes for interesting viewing:
https://www.espn.com/watch/player/_/id/6...64e0e23c1f
Among other things you will learn by watching that game is that Davidson's Rosy Deegan, a 5th year Aussie shooting guard from Perth, and who had 18 points in the win, is completely blind in her left eye, leading to an unorthodox (but highly effective) shot. You would think that a three point shooting specialist would need depth perception, but obviously she has overcome that.
My guess is that Stanford’s emphasis going in is going to be defensive, to keep Duke from recovering its three point shooting after the Davidson debacle. Our perimeter defense has been somewhat flawed so far this year. It was nice to beat Indiana, but we did give them a lot of open perimeter shots—we were fortunate that more of them did not go down. We don’t want to let Duke get its three point shooting back on track. In addition, I am sure Tara and the coaches know how to defend Kennedy Brown—and Cam in particular will have memories of playing her. Avoiding fouls will be important, given that Brown tends to pick up quite a few herself. On offense, our players are going to be forced out of their normal systems and patterns. It won't be comfortable for them. But it will be excellent preparation for the likes of Colorado et al.
