By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Fading fast and blowing a nine-point lead in the final 3½ minutes, third-seeded Duke needed a miracle to upset No. 2 seed LSU in an NCAA Sacramento Regional semifinal here Friday.
The Blue Devils got two for the price of one.
The first was LSU batting a potential game-ending defensive rebound out of bounds to the right side of Duke’s basket with 2.6 seconds left.
The second one was letting the Dookie, who had already missed six of seven 3-pointers on the night, take a crack at being the hero.
Off an inbounds pass, Blue Devils’ senior guard Ashlon Johnson’s 3-pointer did a victory lap around the inside of the rim before falling through the net as the game-ending buzzer sounded for an 87-85 victory that ended LSU’s season two wins shy of the Final Four.
“You put yourself in a position to win the game, and a crazy shot like that beats you,” said LSU fifth-year head coach Kim Mulkey, who last lost in the Sweet 16 in 2018, which was the season before she won her third and final national championship coaching Baylor. “We just couldn’t get three stops in a row. We couldn’t rebound the ball to take off in transition. It was like we were moving through mud.
“But we did fight to the bitter end and put ourselves still in a position to win.”
The Tigers (29-6) trailed Duke 84-75 with 3:34 left when they scored 10 consecutive points. They took an 85-84 lead with 9.2 seconds left on two free throws by former Bossier City Parkway star Mikaylah Williams.
On the ensuing possession, LSU played solid defense and forced Duke’s Taina Mair to miss a corner 3-pointer with five seconds left. A fierce rebounding scrum resulted in the ball ricocheting out of bounds off Tigers’ freshman forward ZaKiyah Johnson.
Duke called a timeout, and then LSU followed with its timeout after it got a look at the Blue Devils’ alignment.
“I’m so proud of our team’s resilience,” Duke head coach Kara Lawson said. “It can weigh on you mentally late in the game when you squander a lead, and the other team takes it. We stayed so strong in those huddles. All their eyes were on me, and we were very purposeful in what we wanted to do, and our execution on that last play was great.”
The play unfolded just like Lawson drew it up.
Duke’s Mair was the inbounds passer standing to the right of the basket. The other four Blue Devils stacked themselves along the right side of the lane – Delany Thomas closest to the baseline, then Ashlon Johnson, followed by Toby Fornier and Riley Nelson on the far end of the stack.
As the play started, Nelson used a Fornier screen, looped to her right and swept along the baseline towards the left corner with LSU’s Jada Richard trailing her.
When Nelson cut towards the baseline, Ashlon Johnson sprinted towards the Duke bench. She shook her defender, LSU’s Flau’Jae Johnson, and squeezed between a shoulder-to-shoulder double-screen set by Thomas and Fournier.
Mair hit Ashlon Johnson with a pass. She faked a shot to get the trailing Flau’Jae Johnson to fly past her long enough to launch the game-winning three-pointer.
“The way it went in, I felt like I was in a dream and it was just, you know, playing back over and over again before the ball went in,” Ashton Johnson said. “It doesn’t even feel real right now. I’m on cloud nine.”
As Duke (27-8) began celebrating the win that advanced it to Sunday’s Elite Eight regional final vs. No. 1-seeded UCLA, the stunned Tigers walked off the court like zombies.
“As a competitor, nobody wants to lose, especially like that,” Williams said. “And then knowing that there were a lot of things that had us in that position. We couldn’t get a stop at that point in time. We didn’t get those key rebounds that we needed, and that put us in the situation that we were in in the first place. We couldn’t get rebounds when it mattered.”
The loss negated the finest game of South Carolina junior transfer guard MiLaysha Fulwiley’s first LSU season. She scored a game-high and career-high 28 points, including 18 in the first half when she kept the Tigers within striking distance of Duke’s 47-40 lead at the break.
Junior All-SEC first-team honoree Wiliams scored 22 points, including LSU’s last six points of the game. Senior guard Flau’Jae Johnson finished her fabulous college career with 13 points, including 10 in the second half after missing six of seven field goal attempts in the first half.
After Duke shot 55 percent and dominated rebounding in the first half, 8½-point favorite LSU was in chase mode most of the day.
Duke freshman forward Fournier had her way with just about any LSU defender who tried to guard her. She had 22 points (as did Mair) and her nine rebounds included five offensive boards.
“Whatever this team needs me to do, I’m willing to do it, whether that’s scoring, rebounding, or just making the one more pass,” Mair said. “I’m just willing to do what it takes to win.”
LSU was lucky not to trail by double digits at halftime. Fulwiley was the offense, including five layups through traffic and a couple of deep 3’s.
The Tigers, who last weekend set an NCAA tournament record for most points scored in the first and second rounds, rarely ran any offensive plays in the opening half.
While Duke systematically sliced up LSU’s defense – the Blue Devils moved the ball, shot 46 percent from the field in the first two quarters, including 26 points in the paint – LSU basically didn’t do any of that.
Offensively, there was no ball reversal and too many quick shots. The Tigers didn’t create many Duke turnovers, and when they did often handed it immediately back in their haste to score quickly.
Yet, it only took LSU the first 3:23 of the third quarter to wipe away the halftime deficit. Williams’ three-point play gave the Tigers their first lead since 2-0 with the game 16 seconds old.
Though LSU trailed just 67-65 at the end of the third quarter., a 10-0 Duke run in less than two minutes put the Biue Devils in the catbird seat with 7:35 left to play.
Despite giving up a season-high in points and allowing Duke to grab 20 offensive rebounds (it had just eight in its 93-77 home loss to LSU in December), the Tigers dug deep for one last rally.
On the cusp of a fourth straight Elite Elight berth. It took a helluva shot to send them home, where Mulkey said she’ll re-coup, hire two assistants to replace Gary Redus and Daphne Mitchell (Redus was recently hired by Rutgers and hired Mitchell as an assistant), and pluck two or three players out of the transfer portal.
Mulkey made it a point after Friday’s loss to shoot down social media rumors that she’s retiring.
“It’s just a flat-out lie, I’ve never told anybody that,” she said. “I’m not retiring. Do I look that bad? I’m only 63. And I’m healthy, with a few stents in my heart. Doctor says I’m good to go.
“I’m going to be in this game unless LSU fires me, until I can’t put a product on that floor that’s competitive, or my health fails me.”
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com