NCAAW: Georgia Tech seeks rare win against Duke in ranked ACC matchup

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The No. 14 Duke Blue Devils (16-4; 7-1 ACC) will play the No. 18 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (17-3; 5-3 ACC) this Sunday, Jan. 26 in a ranked midseason matchup between two of the ACC’s best. Tip-off is scheduled for 2 p.m. ET and the game can be streamed via ACC Extra.

Ever since dropping a low-scoring overtime game against rival North Carolina, Duke has been playing some of its best basketball as a team, reeling off four-straight wins since Jan. 12—three of them not particularly close. The Blue Devils nearly doubled-up California, 72-38, before handily beating Stanford 74-49 and SMU 81-46. The most recent of those wins came on the road, and Duke has two more coming up against Georgia Tech and NC State, which head coach Kara Lawson is optimistic about.

“We’ve been in every type of environment that you can be in,” Lawson told local media. “We understand what it takes to win on the road… I wanted to expose them in non-conference to [road games], so that they had a feel for what it would be like. It’s very important as a competitor that you know yourself in pressure situations and in tough moments.”

Duke head coach Kara Lawson credits her team’s recent success on the road to a tough early-season non-conference schedule.

Photo by Nicholas Faulkner/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Sunday’s game against Georgia Tech will be another one of those tough moments. The Yellow Jackets got off to the best start in program history earlier in the season, winning their first 15 games They’re 5-3 in ACC play thus far, having won two in a row against Virginia and Clemson. Georgia Tech also boasts a 12-1 home record.

The Yellow Jackets have a trio of guards that, when hot, can put pressure on even the toughest defenses. Kara Dunn, Tonie Morgan and Dani Carnegie have been leading the charge for Georgia Tech, combining to average 45 points and 8.9 assists per game, with Morgan recently making headlines for a triple-double she recorded against Clemson.

Highlights: Georgia Tech’s Tonie Morgan posts a triple-double

It’s been a while since Georgia Tech has beaten Duke, though, and the Blue Devils are playing like not only one of the best teams in the ACC, but one of the best teams in the country. Duke is outscoring its opponents by an average of 18.3 points per game, and according to Her Hoop Stats, is holding opponents to 79.2 points per 100 possessions, ranking No. 18 in Division I in defensive rating. The Blue Devils have also been elite on the boards (41.9 percent offensive rebounding rate; No. 8 in Division I) and are forcing steals on 13.7 percent of opponent plays.

Can this year’s Yellow Jackets overcome that tough Duke defense? In the last three games between the two programs—all Duke victories—Georgia Tech scored 58, 46 and 47 points, and the Yellow Jackets haven’t broken 60 points in a game against Duke since 2019. If they’re going to buck that trend, they’ll need Carnegie, who is averaging 21 points per game on 48.6 percent shooting from the field in ACC play, to have one of the offensive explosions that have characterized her young career to this point.