Matilda Ekh was blunt after the game: the No. 12 Hokies entered Thursday’s game vs. Duke with revenge on their mind after their 63-46 loss in Durham on Jan. 18. And they never lost faith in their goal for a second in their 61-56 win.
“The only thing we said is, ‘We’re winning this game,’” Ekh said afterwards. “That was the only thing. Nothing fancy or anything. We just said we’re going to win this game.”
Virginia Tech (21-4, 12-2) did just that in front of its fourth sold-out crowd of the season in Cassell Coliseum in a gritty contest against the Blue Devils (16-8, 8-5). The league-leaders willed themselves to their eighth straight victory and their 24th in a row on its home floor.
It wasn’t easy. Duke, who boasts one of the best defenses in the country, frustrated Tech point guard Georgia Amoore, who had an off-night and scored just 13 points on 4-of-21 shooting with six turnovers. Tech shot well in the first and fourth quarters (12-of-25, 48%) but struggled in the middle two (10-of-29, 34%).
However, the Hokies’ other All-American, Elizabeth Kitley, was terrific. She carried the load with her 34 points on 13-of-17 shooting, which featured eight free throws in nine attempts, and 12 rebounds — seven on the offensive glass. It was her seventh 30-point performance of the year and her sixth with 10 rebounds, too, the most in Division I this season — and fourth-most in a D-I campaign over the last decade.
“Against a great player, sometimes they’re going to score,” Duke head coach Kara Lawson said. “… They’re going to make shots. You just try to make the shots as difficult as you can, and she made a lot of difficult ones. … She’s a really good player, obviously, fifth-year senior and top player in our league for a long time and she’s had many nights like this.”
Just four Hokies scored — Kitley (34 points), Amoore (13), Matilda Ekh (11) and Carys Baker (3) — the fewest in a victory in program history. But it took everybody, especially on the defensive end.
The Blue Devils like to press, trap and muck things up, and the 36 fouls chopped the game up. Neither team shot super well — 41 percent for Tech, 37 percent for Duke. But Tech’s defense was good enough to win, in part because of things like Amoore’s three steals, Baker’s three blocks and one each from Cayla King, Clara Strack and Carleigh Wenzel.
Everyone played a role on the boards, too; Kitley had a game-high 12, but Amoore and Ekh had four apiece while Olivia Summiel and Strack had three each. King, Wenzel and Baker all grabbed one.
“Very proud of our kids,” Tech head coach Kenny Brooks said. “Tough situation, tough battle. I felt we played like two games, just exhausted mentally, physically. But proud of our kids, they answered the bell a lot of different times, played through the physicality.”
Tied at 42 at the start of the fourth quarter, the Hokies limited Duke to 5-of-18 from the field while scoring the ball slightly better than they did in the previous two periods (43%). They got key stops when needed.
Offensively, they struggled to find a rhythm, not uncommon against a stingy Blue Devils unit. Amoore, who was pressured for 94 feet for the majority of 40 minutes, could hardly buy a basket. It was a rare performance from the Australian, who is shooting 40 percent this season and averaging 18 points per game. In fact, it’s only the fourth time in program history a player has shot worse than 20 percent on at least 20 attempts.
Yet, she arguably had the biggest play of the night. Virginia Tech led 56-53 out of a timeout with 35.4 remaining. And, for what seemed like the first time all night, Duke decided to double Kitley in the post. King found Kitley, who drew in the defense and kicked it out to Amoore at the top of the key without hesitation. And, despite being 3-of-20 to that point, she drained the 3-pointer to ice the game.
It circles back to the players’ chemistry, which was first cultivated in the team’s trip to Greece over the summer. The Hokies trust Amoore, no matter the situation or the stakes. The same can be said for Kitley and others. And it showed in that moment when nobody thought twice about it. In their eyes, it was just their teammate doing what she does.
“We’re never going to stop going to her, we’re never going to stop going to me,” Kitley said of Amoore. “So the end of the game when they had three people kind of sagging and were leaving Georgia on the 3-point line, we’re giving it to Georgia every time, it doesn’t matter how many times she’s missed, because she can make clutch shots like that.”
“I think one of our biggest strengths is the trust we have for each other,” Ekh said. “Going back to Georgia, I know she had an off-day, but I don’t care if she’s 5-for-5 or 0-for-5, I trust her just as much to shoot the sixth time, and I think that’s one of our strengths, that we have that trust for each other.”
In the end, Tech came out on top against Duke, similar to last season when it lost at Duke in January and got payback a month later (and then again in Greensboro). Those made up two of the team’s 15 wins throughout the hot streak; this time around, it’s the eighth, and it’s at the top of the ACC heading into the final four games of the year: at No. 18 Louisville, vs. North Carolina, at No. 16 Notre Dame, at Virginia.
The Hokies are well liked in the national picture, too. The NCAA Tournament selection committee released its top-16 teams on Thursday afternoon; Tech slotted in at No. 10, good for a No. 3 seed. Should it continue to win, that stock will only continue to soar.
Everything revolves around trust, good defense — an aspect that is much improved in the five weeks since the previous meeting with Duke — and having the right mentality. The Hokies are obviously talented and can score the ball, too, but they had all three of those aforementioned elements against the Blue Devils, which guided them to their win, even when they were up and down offensively.
“We’re at that point where they’re going to trust what they’ve seen in hours of practice and games and not just what’s going on in that particular moment,” Brooks said. “… Their ability to love each other, to trust each other, to share in each other’s successes, you have to have all of that. … And they understand [that].
“… These kids are expecting to win. That was the message going out, and I thought they did a much better job and just came up with some of the plays that we really needed to get a little bit of separation.”
Box Score: No. 12 Virginia Tech 61, Duke 56
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