UNC women's basketball loses to Duke

DURHAM — Coming into Sunday’s 65-58 loss against Duke, the No. 15 North Carolina women’s basketball team knew what it had to do: Play good defense. Force turnovers. Rebound the ball. Limit Duke’s outside shooters.

And UNC forced 29 turnovers, a season-high for Duke. It pulled down 28 offensive rebounds, recorded 13 steals and held the Blue Devils to just two 3-pointers.

But the Tar Heels’ dreadful shooting performance undermined all of that.

No. 5 Duke pulled away in the second half to defeat North Carolina in the teams’ final regular-season contest, improving to 27-2 and 17-1 in the ACC.

“We missed a lot of shots,” point guard Tierra Ruffin-Pratt said, referring to her team’s 29.7-percent shooting clip. “We got good looks, open shots, but we couldn’t hit them. That was the main thing that hurt us.”

It was a considerable improvement defensively for UNC (26-5, 14-4 ACC) in comparison to the meeting earlier in the season, in which Duke put up 84 points.

But a five-for-23 performance from UNC’s leading scorer Ruffin-Pratt, early foul trouble for center Waltiea Rolle and the team’s 43-percent free-throw shooting all but negated the tenacity North Carolina displayed on defense.

The Tar Heels hung with Duke during the beginning of a low-scoring first half but eventually allowed the Blue Devils to open up a 22-10 lead.

Xylina McDaniel and Ruffin-Pratt, two players who usually dominate the paint for UNC, couldn’t convert anything from close range.

Then, shots started falling. UNC ended the half on a 17-4 run fueled by two buckets apiece from Krista Gross, Ruffin-Pratt and Latifah Coleman. UNC took a 27-26 lead into halftime.

Some residual shooting heat remained during the first minute of the second half, but after that, UNC’s shooters cooled off dramatically.

“This game has a lot of excitement to it,” senior Gross said. “I don’t think it’s nerves, you’re just so excited that you’re a little too strong. You just have to be able to finish.”

After Brittany Rountree hit a 3-pointer at the 18:52 mark to give her team a 32-26 lead, UNC didn’t score again until Gross hit two free-throws with 12:31 to play.

During a second-half run, the Tar Heels missed 19 consecutive shots from the field. Duke went on a 22-2 run and took a 48-34 lead.

“Normally (Ruffin-)Pratt doesn’t miss some of the shots she missed today, and Waltiea had some little chippies around the basket she missed — stuff like that,” coach Sylvia Hatchell said. “But we’ve had games where they’ve put those down.”

Rolle fouled out with five-and-a-half minutes to play, leaving the space under the basket open for Duke’s Alexis Jones to penetrate. Jones finished with 22 points.

The Tar Heels fought to close the gap, but the contrast between the teams’ performances was never clearer than when UNC was forced to foul the Blue Devils in the game’s last minutes.

Duke converted 23-of-30 from the foul line overall and made 11 of 13 in the game’s final five minutes to seal the deal.

“We accomplished several of our goals,” Hatchell said. “All of these things I challenged the players on, we accomplished. But if we could make some foul shots, that would help.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.