On Thursday night, Duke lost its third game of the women's college basketball season, falling 85-72 against South Florida. The loss means that Duke joins Florida State, Boston College and SMU as the ACC teams with the most losses overall on the season, which isn't great company to keep considering Duke was widely viewed as the ACC favorite this season. I was extremely sold on Duke at the top of what looked like a weakened ACC, but the Blue Devils appear to just be another part of what's been a disappointing season for the conference.
And things aren't about to improve. The team faces South Carolina and LSU — plus either Texas or UCLA depending on the result of the South Carolina game — in its next three contests. Things could get rough here.
What's wrong with the Blue Devils? Can things get better? Let's talk about Duke women's basketball.
What's going on with Duke women's basketball?
After advancing to the Elite Eight last season, hopes were high in Durham heading into the season. A lot of ACC teams seemed to be in this kind of soft rebuild mode, and Duke had a great shot to win its first regular-season conference title since 2013.
The season-opening 58-52 loss to Baylor was a bump in the road, but that could be explained away. It was the first game of the season! Baylor was really good! The game was played in France! If Duke was going to drop a game before its upcoming gauntlet, that was clearly the one it would drop.
Then came the West Virginia game. The Mountaineers played the entire second half with just five players after the entire bench was ejected, which should have meant a blowout win for the Blue Devils, right?
Wrong! Duke scored just 49 points, falling 57-49 to fall to 2-2 on the season. The team won its next game, but an ACC team only beating Liberty 71-57 is not ideal. Then on Thursday, Duke lost 85-72 to a South Florida team that's in flux, as its long-time head coach recently departed for a job in the WNBA.
So, what's going on? For one, the offense is struggling. The team's 97.0 ranks 16th out of the 18 ACC teams, as does the team's effective field goal percentage. Duke has been a middle-of-the-pack team on defense, which is survivable if the offense is playing at a high level, but the offense has instead been a nightmare.
One major part of that has been an inability to finish in the paint. The team is shooting 55.6 percent at the rim, which is 1.7 percent below the Division I average, and 32.8 percent on non-rim paint attempts, which is 5.0 percent below average. Toby Fournier shot 65.7 percent at the rim last year; she's down to 55.3 percent this year. The shots just aren't falling, and it's dooming this team. It's clear that not having Reigan Richardson in the backcourt this year has disrupted the flow for the Blue Devils.
Duke's brutal upcoming schedule
I'm sure Duke knew this upcoming stretch would be a tough one; it's just that the Blue Devils likely expected to be either 6-0 or 5-1 entering the stretch, allowing the team to survive a few very, very difficult games.
Instead, Duke is now staring at a 3-6 start to the year. The team faces No. 2 South Carolina in the Players Era Women's Championship, then faces either No. 3 UCLA or No. 4 Texas after that, depending on the result. And if you thought it couldn't get worse, Duke begins December against No. 5 LSU, though I suppose it's good for Duke that that one's at home.
It eases up a bit after that, but the remaining non-conference games aren't cake walks: South Dakota State and Belmont are very good mid-majors.
This is about to be a nightmare.
Can the Blue Devils still win the ACC?
The good news for Duke is that these are non-conference games. There's still plenty of time to fix things before conference play begins, especially with the ACC as a whole sitting on shaky ground at the moment.
Duke has the talent to win the conference, but that talent has to figure out how to make shots and how to play together. The team has the fourth-worst turnover rate in the conference, so that's something that needs to be cleaned up. The team is giving up a ton of offensive rebounds. It's sending opponents to the line too much.
There's a lot that needs to be worked on here. It's not impossible that Duke fixes all these issues, but what we've seen from the team so far doesn't inspire much confidence in that happening. Duke should rebound enough to safely make the NCAA Tournament, but even that isn't a sure thing as teams like Virginia, Syracuse and Miami are off to strong starts that could complicate things if those starts are sustainable.