Duke prevails over Pitt Women
By: Jacque Howell
The Pittsburgh Panthers suffered a disappointing 62-45 loss away against No. 17/16 Duke Blue Devils Thursday.
Initially, the Panthers kept within close range of the Blue Devils. By the first TV timeout, Pittsburgh was only down by three, the score 8-5. However, Duke went on a 11-3 run, forcing a Pittsburgh timeout with 12:04 left in the first half. Brianna Kiesel would make a jumper coming off the time-out, bringing the score to 19-10. Duke scored 14 of the 19 points in the paint.
Neither team would make any offensive advantages for the next several minutes. Finally at 8:11, Rebecca Greenwell made a three-pointer to break the dry streak. With 7:39 left in the first half, the Blue Devils would go on another offensive stretch, bringing the score to 28-14 at the next official TV timeout. Ultimately, The Panthers walked into half-time down by 16 points, the score being 36-20.
The offense for both teams would start extremely slow for the second half. Duke struggled with turnover issues. Pittsburgh was able to force Duke to turnover nine times coming into the second half of the game. Despite the large amount of turnovers, Pittsburgh was never able to truly capitalize on them.
Duke remained in the lead for the entire second half, keeping Pittsburgh at bay by double-digit points. With 2:28 left in the game, Duke had a 21-point lead of 61-40. Just like the first half of the game, the Panthers struggled to put points on the board and was overall outscored in the paint 34-16.
In comparison, Duke was able to shoot 50% (23-for-46) for the night while Pitt only managed to shoot 29% (18-for-62) for jumpers and 24.1% (7-for-29) for three-pointers. Pittsburgh was managed to get out rebound, only having 26 in contrast to Duke having 44, 33 of those being defensive rebounds. Though, the Panthers were able to force a season-high of 25 turnovers on the Blue Devils.
Duke had three players contribute double-digits; Azurá Stevens scored the highest points of 14, while Oderah Chidom and Rebecca Greenwell each scored 10 points. Stevens also had the highest rebounds for the team, a total of 12 and Chidom had the second highest of 10 rebounds, and the third highest was six total rebounds from Kendall Cooper.
As for the Panthers, Brianna Kiesel put the most points on the board, a total of 13. Fred Potvin had the team’s second highest amount of points for the game, a total of 11. Yacine Diop and Monica Wignot tied for the most amount of rebounds, only five.
Pittsburgh returns home to the Petersen Events Center for the upcoming game this Sunday, February 1st. Tip off will begin at 1p.m. against the Miami Hurricanes.
