No. 2 UConn women beat No. 10 Duke 83-52
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Trailing by two points against No. 10 Duke with less than seven minutes to go in the first half, No. 2 Connecticut once again found another gear.
The Huskies went into halftime on an 11-2 run and ended up blowing out the Blue Devils 83-52 on Monday night.
Moriah Jefferson led five Huskies in double figures with 18 points. The junior point guard, who had a career-high 24 points against SMU on Saturday, hit six of her eight shots and was 3 of 4 from 3-point range. She also had four assists.
"I'm kind of feeling like I'm a little bit on a streak, so I might as well shoot it," Jefferson said.
Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Breanna Stewart each scored 14 points and Morgan Tuck added 13 for the Huskies (10-1), who have won nine straight since a November loss at No. 15 Stanford.
"We come to Connecticut because we work harder than everybody else, and we proved that tonight," Stewart said.
Freshman forward Azura Stevens led Duke (8-4) with 16 points. Elizabeth Williams added 15.
The Huskies outran the Blue Devils, using pressure defense to force 22 turnovers while outscoring Duke 17-2 on the fast break.
This was the 14th and last scheduled meeting between the teams. UConn has won 11 of those games and the last eight in a row by an average of 29 points.
"Connecticut has been the better team every time," Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie said. "They've had better leadership on the floor than we've had. It's not rocket science."
The teams went back and forth through the first half.
Mosqueda-Lewis' first 3-pointer, just under six minutes into the game, highlighted a 17-2 UConn run that put the Huskies up 19-8. It also moved her past Maya Moore and into second place on the school's career list. She finished 4 of 9 from behind the arc, giving her 315 career 3-pointers, three behind Diana Taurasi.
The Blue Devils got back into the game with a 16-3 run. Back-to-back 3-pointers by Stevens and Ka'lia Johnson tied it at 22. A basket by Williams gave the Blue Devils the lead.
But UConn took over from there and led 33-26 at halftime. A driving layup by Jefferson gave UConn its first 20-point lead at 58-38 midway through the second half, and the Huskies were not threatened again.
"It's a game of runs and as long as we can have longer and more runs than the other team, it will be OK," Tuck said.
Duke had the size advantage on the Huskies, but UConn outrebounded the Blue Devils 38-32. The Huskies also blocked seven shots.
Duke's Sierra Calhoun, whose older brother Omar plays for UConn, failed to score, going 0 for 8 from the floor.
The Blue Devils, who beat Kentucky when the Wildcats were ranked No. 8 last week, have not beaten two top-10 teams in a row since the 2010-11 season.
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TIP-INS
Duke: Williams had never before scored more than 11 points against UConn. She had 10 at halftime of this one. Her 15 points moved her into ninth place on Duke's career scoring list with 1,632.
UConn: The Huskies have won 28 consecutive games against teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference. Their last loss against the ACC came to North Carolina in January 2007.
SERIES FINALE
McCallie said she would consider playing UConn again in the future, but the time had come to rotate the Huskies out of the schedule. "Our schedule is too hard," she said. "This team has not responded the way that I would have liked them to." Duke lost to No. 1 South Carolina 51-50, and beat No. 8 Kentucky 89-68.
UP NEXT
Duke: The Blue Devils head home for their first game of 2015, facing North Carolina A&T on Jan. 2.
UConn: The Huskies play their first conference road game of the season on Wednesday against East Carolina.