Sacramento, Calif. — The NCAA tournament tends not to feature many nonconference rematches. Usually, teams like the opportunity to play a new opponent in the NCAA tournament after playing a slog of conference opponents for two months. However, in the Sweet 16 on Friday night, Duke will face LSU for the second time this season — with both teams looking very different from when they met in December.
The first game between the two teams went the Tigers’ way as LSU beat Duke 93-77 in Durham. However, it was after that game that something clicked for the Blue Devils. After the loss to LSU, Duke’s record was 3-6. They come into Friday’s matchup with the Tigers having won 23 of their last 25 games. While many would say the loss was the inflection point of the Blue Devils’ season, head coach Kara Lawson would push back on that narrative.
“I don’t think that that loss was like the turning point or anything,” Lawson said in a press conference Thursday. “We played a game three days later, against Virginia Tech. That was our first league game in ACC play. I would kind of push back on that narrative that [the LSU] loss changed everything and changed the season. There were six of them. There were a lot of losses that changed the season.”
The Blue Devils came into the year expecting to have a deep roster. However, they lost three players early in the season due to injury. Those injuries disrupted Duke’s rhythm and played a major role in their early-season struggles. However, there wasn’t a single moment that led to the Blue Devil turnaround.
“I think we just had to adjust,” Duke forward Delaney Thomas told The IX Sports. “There were a lot of changes that were made throughout the season. … I don’t know if there was a specific moment where we were like, ‘It’s just us’ because all of us are a team, no matter who’s on the court or off the court.”
Duke has been known for its elite defense under Kara Lawson, but in the first matchup against LSU, it struggled on that side of the ball. The Blue Devils gave up 93 points, the most they’ve given up in a game all season. The Tigers shot 60% from the field, scored 31 points in the second quarter, and had six players in double figures.
Since that game, Duke’s defense has been elite once again, only giving up 70 or more points twice the rest of the season. In a rematch against Baylor in the second round, the Blue Devils held the Bears to just 46 en route to a 23-point win. The defense will be key as Duke faces LSU, the highest-scoring offense in the country.
The Tigers come into Friday’s matchup with Duke after dominating the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament on their home floor and putting up back-to-back 100-point games. The 101 points they scored on Texas Tech was their 16th 100-point game of the season, a new record for most 100-point games in a season at the Division 1 level.
LSU’s offense is potent, and it’s easy to see why. The Tigers have four players who average double-figure scoring and four more who average between 9.6 and 8.4 points per game. Their offense is electric, and they don’t rely on one player to make it work.
“Talent — you look at the talent,” LSU head coach Kim Mulkey said in a press conference Thursday. “It’s not just one player that we rely on. Our offense doesn’t run through one player to make everybody else better. We run a style of play that allows all of them a little freedom to score.”
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Even with all the success they’ve had this year, LSU has had some losses, including a 6-point loss to South Carolina in the SEC tournament. However, the team feels a lot of good came from that loss, which has helped propel them during the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. Mulkey recalls some bickering among the players during timeouts during the game against South Carolina. It wasn’t animosity amongst the players, but more a hunger to win and being a competitive group.
Following the loss, the players met and hashed out the issues. They feel the meeting was helpful in defining their roles and reminding them all that their goals are still ahead of them. They held each other accountable and continue to push one another, led by senior guard Flau’jae Johnson. Junior guard Mikaylah Williams knows the goal for this team is making the Final Four, and that a competitive mindset is important.
“I think the bickering and the arguing is just us wanting to win and us being competitors and knowing it’s coming from a good spot,” Williams said in a press conference Thursday. “It’s coming from a place of love and coming from a place of, ‘I want to win, I want you to be better, and I want to win with you.’ I think us having that mindset coming into the Sweet 16 and further down the road is good for us so we can hold each other accountable and fix those little details that we may need to fix.”
As these teams prepare for Friday’s rematch, one thing is very clear: both teams are very different from the way they were back when they met in December. The journeys for both teams to Sacramento were very different, but the goal is the same: to win. Both teams are playing with confidence, so the outcome will be decided by the details.
“I think their confidence is out of the roof too,” Mulkey said of Duke. “They didn’t change anything. Their identity and our identity is the same as it was last time we played. You just perfect what you do. I think that they’re just doing things better now than they did then, whether it’s defense, whether it’s executing things on the offensive end. And all that’s because of playing games and playing more games together and having success.”
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