UM women beat Duke 61-55, advance to ACC tournament quarterfinal vs. No. 4 Louisville
Coach Katie Meier walked into the Miami Hurricanes locker room at the Greensboro Coliseum Thursday night with her team trailing Duke by four, and didn’t like what she saw on the white board.
Her players are asked to write positives and negatives from the first half, and the plus column was empty. “I was like, `Well, I better get them confident because they’re pretty down right now,’” Meier said.
Her pep talk worked, as the Hurricanes came alive in the second half, scored 22 points in the fourth quarter, and beat the Blue Devils 61-55 to advance to Friday’s ACC tournament quarterfinal. The seventh-seeded Canes will face No. 2 seed Louisville at 6 p.m.
Redshirt senior Destiny Harden played like someone who did not want her season to end, coming through with big plays in the clutch. She finished with 11 points, nine rebounds, two assists, one block and two steals.
When Harden put Miami ahead 47-46 with five minutes to go, Meier gave her a high five as she ran down the floor.
“We rode Destiny in big moments for big buckets,” Meier said. “Des has big eyes anyway, but when we call something for Des and her eyes get real big, I know that’s going in. She had big eyes in that third and fourth quarter and really came through for us.”
Lola Pendande, a junior forward from Spain, also came up big late in the game. She made back-to-back baskets in the paint during an 11-2 UM fourth-quarter run. Pendande scored 11 points, Kelsey Marshall and Karla Erjavec added 10 apiece.
“I think we’re really good,” Meier said of her team. “You think you shut down Kelsey Marshall to some extent, and we’ll have someone else step up. We’ve become a team that can go to three or four different players. Mykea (Gray) was gutsy, some real specific play calls for Destiny that she came through on, and Lola, too.”
Duke was led by Celeste Taylor, who scored 19 points.
Miami is peaking at the right time. The Canes have won six of their past seven games, improved to 18-11 overall and 11-8 in the ACC.
“I don’t have any question we belong in the Big Dance,” Meier said. “This win proves it. We’ll have to do it again tomorrow against another great team.”
The Hurricanes played then-No. 4 Louisville at home on Feb. 1 and lost by just three, 69-66.
Meier was a standout player at Duke from 1985-90 and is in the school’s Hall of Honor, but she said that didn’t make Thursday’s win any more special. “I’m so old I don’t even remember where I went to college,” she said, smiling. “I’ve spent four times as much time as I did at Duke, so I’m a Hurricane.”
She went on to praise the ACC.
“What a conference, I’ve been in it a long time and I’m as tired and challenged this year as any year in the league, the Boston College- FSU game, Duke-Miami, c’mon, these games are bloodbaths,” she said. “Everyone’s playing their guts out.”
Ninth seeded Florida State advanced with a 63-58 win over Boston College. The Seminoles face top seed North Carolina State on Friday.