Inside the Dukes: Lesson Learned?

All that separated the Duquesne Women’s Basketball Team and the fourth quarter was 1.1 seconds in a Sunday afternoon showdown which certainly had been one to forget.

What could possibly go wrong?

Richmond quickly provided that answer as Faith Alston’s inbounds pass found Anna Camden for two points. While the Spiders deservedly celebrated one of many exclamation points in an 82-58 victory, Duquesne coach Dan Burt put his head down, holding it for several seconds.

It was just that kind of afternoon for his team.

“It was one of the days where you go to the office and learn a little about yourself and the team, and you get your teeth kicked in,” he observed. “That happened today. We certainly did not play our best basketball by any stretch. I thought before the game that we had a good gameplan and we were prepared for it. We knew what they were going to do, they don’t really deviate from what they’re going to do and we couldn’t stop them. I’ve been in the Atlantic 10 for 18 years as an assistant and as an assistant coach and that’s easily one of the three or four best teams that I have seen. They have positional size and shoot the ball so beautifully, they move the ball even more beautifully, that’s a great basketball team that we played today with tremendous veteran experience.”

Burt believes that this result shows not just how experienced Richmond is, but how young his side is. Duquesne has transfers on their team but as he explained it, they did not have much experience where they came from, so really it has been Megan McConnell, Jerni Kiaku and the rest learning and trying to figure it out on a game-by-game basis.

There was a silver lining in that Burt was pleased with the fight his team displayed, especially in the fourth quarter, where Duquesne shot 60% and outscored Richmond 24-18.

STRATEGY BACKFIRES

All season long, Duquesne his pressed after makes and misses, but Burt decided to flip the script and went zone.

He was optimistic that this would work because it was the first time all year that the Dukes have played zone.

The mindset behind the decision was that Richmond had played about 1,000 possessions of basketball and 100 were against zone.

It was the combined elements of surprise with a smaller sample size for them and there of course is a chance it could have worked had Richmond not gotten off to a quicker start and forced the Dukes to adjust to the press.

Richmond opened 2-for-10 from the field, though a lot of those misses were good looks that fell just off the mark. That was when Rachel Ullstrom entered the conversation and found her shot.

“I’ll say this in an emotional state, this is the last time that we ever deviate from chaos and that’s pressing on every make or miss and trapping all over the floor,” Burt remarked. “They just made us look bad in that first and second quarter. The last time I felt like this seriously was probably UConn. I’m not talking about UConn in the NCAA Tournament, I’m talking about when we played them in Toronto, Canada (12/22/17), I give that much praise to how they played.”

As Duquesne looks to turn the page, it will do so back at home against Massachusetts at 6 p.m. Burt believes his team goes into that game learning about what it is. It knows it is not an at-large team, that would potentially be Richmond with George Mason having an outside shot.

Burt desires for a return to chaos, especially by making baskets to set up an ideal press. He maintained that shooting three-point shots analytically makes sense, but offensive rebounds have to be done at a higher level.

“We have to be as mentally and physically fresh and we can be as we get into late February for the conference tournament,” concluded Burt. “In addition to that we have to continue to learn about who we are and the system we’re playing and continually teach and get better every day. Sometimes those results won’t show in the win-loss column. I’m not saying we got better today; we got a lesson today and that will hopefully help us get better.”