'This is only the beginning' — Kara Lawson's Duke gets a signature win over No. 9 Iowa
"We can't look at this and just say, ‘this is all that we wanted,’ because it's definitely not."
DURHAM, N.C. — The old arena was far from full, but the chants from the smattering of Cameron Crazies were loud and clear in the third quarter.
“OVER-RATED.”
No. 9 Iowa came to Cameron Indoor Stadium on Thursday night for a primetime game on ESPN, and unranked Duke made Caitlin Clark and her squad look mortal and perishable — not the Big Ten behemoth that the Hawkeyes claim or aim to be.
Duke sprinted circles around Iowa on the perimeter, suffocated Hawkeyes’ shooters, and pushed them over in the paint. In the end, the Blue Devils won 79-64, giving second-year Duke head coach Kara Lawson her first career victory over a Top 25 opponent.
With the triumph in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, Duke remained unbeaten and improved to 7-0 on the season.
Leading the Blue Devils in an off-the-bench effort with 19 points, four rebounds, four steals and four assists was freshman Shayeanne Day-Wilson. Junior guard Celeste Taylor added 17 points and 13 rebounds for Duke, getting her second double-double of the season.
The Blue Devils held Clark, a preseason All-American, to 22 points on 9-of-27 shooting from the floor and 1-of-13 from three-point range. Clark connected on Iowa’s first three-pointer of the day with 3:18 remaining in the third quarter. To rattle Clark, the Blue Devils threw a variety of defenders at her, and fought over and under screens to close out on her quickly.
“We just wanted to guard her within our system,” Lawson said of Clark. “We always say to our team, in transition, you pick up whoever. Grab the greatest threat… I wouldn’t say we did anything special, specifically to her. Our players knew the type of threat she was, knew her tendencies, and just tried to do the best job they could.
“I thought her shots were challenged, and that’s what we were hoping for.”
Iowa (4-1) shot 40% from the floor and 15.8% from behind the arc. This was Iowa’s first game since Nov. 17 because of COVID-19 within the program, and the Hawkeyes appeared rusty, to say the least, scoring well below their previous average of 88.3 points per-game.
“We did not play up to our capabilities, and I’m sure a lot of that had to do with Duke,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said. “Certainly, this was not an Iowa performance that we’re proud of… Our timing was off. Our ability to run our offense was not there tonight.”
Duke trailed 8-2 early on, but then broke off an 18-8 run to end the first quarter and never looked back. The Blue Devils didn’t trail for the remainder of the game, and grew their lead to as many as 18 points.
Key for the Blue Devils in securing the upset victory was forcing Iowa to cough up possessions and then capitalizing on those extra opportunities. Duke forced Iowa into 18 turnovers and scored 19 points off them. Duke also grabbed 16 offensive rebounds and scored 14 points off second-chances.
Entering Thursday, unranked teams were 0-47 against squads ranked in the Top 10 of the Associated Press poll this season. What Duke pulled off was impressive and historic. And it is unlikely that the Blue Devils will be unranked for much longer.
“There’s still some more work to be done within our team,” Day-Wilson said. “This is only the beginning. So, just get ready. There’s going to be some more big wins.”
Day-Wilson is one of nine newcomers to the Blue Devils this year. In the offseason, Lawson brought in seven transfers and two freshmen, completely remaking the roster in her vision. Day-Wilson signed with Duke after decommitting from Syracuse. Players like Taylor and Elizabeth Balogun left good ranked programs — like Texas and Louisville — to join Lawson and the Blue Devils and accomplish something specific; something they believed they could only do at Duke.
Whatever that is, the Blue Devils made a leap toward accomplishing it on Thursday night.
“It is a pretty big win. They’re a very good team; we all know that,” Taylor said. “It’s a huge step in the right direction. But then again, we can't look at this and just say, ‘this is all that we wanted,’ because it's definitely not. Each one of us came here because we wanted to make our mark, and we wanted to do it together. The next player on the bench wants it just as bad as you. Just to have that within your team, I think, is really special.”
Duke didn’t celebrate too much. Taylor and Day-Wilson both seemed calm, reserved and focused in the postgame press conference. They were business-like. They did not appear to be two collegiate athletes who just pulled off an improbable upset. They expected to win.
That this Duke team already has that sort of mentality just 11 games into Lawson’s tenure as head coach is remarkable.
“I can’t take a ton of credit for that. These are competitive young women that have a standard for themselves individually. Before you can create a standard for people, there has to be an individual accountability, an individual work ethic and an individual competitiveness,” Lawson said. “There has to be something; a foundation that they have… (Day-Wilson and Taylor) specifically have that. They believe in themselves, they want to compete, they want to be good, and they want to play in the team framework. And so our expectation is to compete with everybody that we play. That's the expectation. I don't know that we'll beat everybody we play. But the expectation is to compete. And so, that's just our program.
“We're not perfect, we have a lot to work on. But they believe, and that's the best thing I can say about my team.”
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