The NC State women’s basketball team turned on the jets at the end of the fourth quarter to power past the Duke Blue Devils, 77-62, inside Cameron Indoor Stadium on Sunday, Feb. 13, earning the season sweep over Duke.
Junior wing Jakia Brown-Turner had a career day for the Wolfpack (23-3, 14-1 ACC), scoring a season-high 19 points on 9 of 11 shooting and matching her career high with three blocks. Despite a pitiful six-point second quarter, the Pack got it together and erupted for 31 points in the fourth quarter, getting three clutch 3s in a row from graduate guards Kai Crutchfield and Raina Perez, as well as Brown-Turner, in that order, to go on a closing 17-5 run.
“It’s nice to have a veteran team,” said head coach Wes Moore. “Down the stretch, we went with the veterans, and they just kept making plays and making shots. I’m going to miss them. I don’t know, it might be time for me to retire. It was a great win. … We knew it was going to be a battle. Really in the fourth period, we hit a lot of shots, and that ended up being the difference in the game. I’m proud of them. I’m very blessed to be able to work with these young ladies, for sure.”
NC State also got a huge fourth quarter from senior center Elissa Cunane, who went down with an injury in the third quarter on a controversial call. Cunane powered her way back into the game and played all 10 fourth-quarter minutes and added eight points to the Pack’s 31-21 fourth quarter. She, Brown-Turner, Crutchfield and Perez shot a perfect 11 for 11 from the field combined in the fourth.
“It felt good,” Perez said. “It always feels good when your teammates are hitting shots, and especially when you get out of a quarter like that. It was a close game, and then we started hitting shots. It boosted our self-esteem and felt good.”
The Wolfpack’s first and fourth quarters were nearly perfect in an offensive sense, but the Pack’s third quarter was where the tide began to shift. NC State held Duke to just eight points in the quarter on just 3 of 14 shooting. Duke had just three points through the first seven minutes of the period.
However, it wasn’t all good tidings for the Wolfpack. The Pack’s second-quarter scoring output was tied for its worst of the season, finishing with just six points.
NC State came out of the gates in a heated offensive battle against the Blue Devils, hitting 66.7% of its shots and scoring 23 points in the period. Duke, led by Lexi Gordon and Celeste Taylor, battled early and went on to hold NC State to just 21.4% shooting in the second quarter, taking a halftime lead. In fact, this is the fifth time in the last eight games that NC State has trailed at the half — a worrying statistic for the Pack, though the team has won seven of its last eight.
“We’ve got to put four quarters together,” Moore said. “We’ve had our moments where we really come out and play well early, but we haven’t done it enough. I don’t know. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, not getting them as focused as they need to be. But with a veteran team, I hope they will take care of it themselves and make sure we’re all focused and ready to go. You can’t be digging a hole with the caliber of teams we are playing.”
While the second quarter was a nightmare for the Wolfpack, the second half was anything but. NC State shot 72% from the field, 71% from 3 and out-rebounded Duke 18-9 in the second half and, fresh off scoring a season-low six points in a quarter in the second, went on to score a season high in points in a quarter with 31 in the fourth.
After Duke got an and-one play from Shayeann Day-Wilson to get within one score, Crutchfield, Perez and Brown-Turner went on a 3-point barrage to take a 12-point lead in the matter of one minutes and 15 seconds to secure the win. Brown-Turner’s 3 sent Cameron into a frenzy of “Wolf-Pack!” chants.
“[Brown-Turner]’s a player,” Moore said. “She’s a primetime player. Actually, I let the assistants coach her the first two or three quarters, and then I pulled her aside and coached her. No, we want her to be a complete player. She’s obviously a great shooter, but she did a great job of getting to the rim today. Defensively, her length gave them trouble at times. When the game is on the line, we’ve got some kids who are ready to step up. I thought Jakia did that very well.”
With the victory, the Wolfpack has now completed the season sweep of both UNC and Duke. This is the first time since the 2015-16 season that NC State has gone undefeated against the Triangle.
“It’s my first time ever sweeping both teams,” Brown-Turner said. “It’s very important to me, and I’m just happy that we were able to do it. … It means a lot playing against these Triangle teams and just being able to take over North Carolina.”
Next up, the Wolfpack returns to Reynolds Coliseum to take on Wake Forest on Thursday, Feb. 17. That game tips off at 8 p.m. and can be viewed on Raleigh’s Regional Sports Network.
“It’s great having veterans,” Moore said. “It’s almost like having extra coaches out there. They are bringing the young kids along. … At the end of the day, probably with about eight minutes left in the game, I put veterans back in there completely. I have total confidence in them. At some point, they’re going to get hot and get some stops and find a way to win.”
