Duke Women Beat Northwestern in The ACC/Big Ten Challenge

Dec 2, 2022 - 12:00 PM

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The Duke women’s basketball team faced Northwestern in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge Thursday night and prevailed, 66-50.

Duke really crushed it in the second quarter. The Blue Devils were up 13-6 after the first and outscored the Wildcats 19-6 to take a 32-12 lead at the half.

The Devils pushed it out to a 29 point lead in the third and obviously it was never in doubt.

Everyone played at least 14:00 (minus one second) except for Shay Bollin, who got 5:30.

Interestingly though, while everyone scored, only Ashton Jackson go to double figures with 10.

Duke played great defense: Northwestern got 71 shots up but made just 19 for 26.8 percent. The Wildcats hit just 4-21 on threes for 19 percent.

For her part, coach Kara Lawson thought Duke was solid in the first three quarters but not so much in the fourth.

“I think it’s human nature for average people. I don’t think it’s human nature for elite people, elite competitors. I think when you’re an elite competitor, you don’t care what the score is. You don’t care if it’s practice, if it’s a game, you have a lot of pride in how you play. We have to improve in that area. And I think we talked about it at halftime, we talked about in the third quarter: don’t relax. There’s a lot of things that we need to work on and improve on. I feel like we wasted a second half of opportunity to improve, because we didn’t play the way we did with the same effort as the first half.”

Fair enough. Her job is to coach and to get her team as close to its potential as possible. And Duke is definitely improving.

Next up is Richmond at Richmond and two more non-conference games before ACC play begins on December 21st.

• Duke women’s basketball’s early run too much for Northwestern in ACC/Big Ten Challenge matchup
• Watch: Northwestern vs. Duke Women’s Basketball Highlights
• Northwestern vs. Duke Condensed Game | 2022-23 ACC Women’s Basketball
• Rapid Recap: Duke 66, Northwestern 50 Rapid Recap: Duke 66, Northwestern 50
• Blue Devils Post 66-50 Win Over Northwestern
• Duke women post 66-50 win over Northwestern
• BOX SCORE (PDF)
• POSTGAME NOTES (PDF)
• COACH LAWSON QUOTES (PDF)
• PLAYER QUOTES (PDF)