Duke?

Duke’s Cameron Crazies relentless cheers make home wins electric, creating an atmosphere like no other. Unfortunately, if you just started watching Duke this season, you haven’t yet experienced that level of excitement. Why is that? Because Duke is not winning, at all.

Duke’s women’s basketball team, led by USA Women’s National Team coach and 2025 AmeriCup winner Kara Lawson, is having a rough and unusual start to the 2025 season.

   Previously ranked #7 in the country and coming off an ACC tournament title, the Blue Devils are now unranked, with a record below .500 through the first ten games of their season. This year has been a true series of unfortunate events, which led them to start 4-6 after many upset losses.

   First, losing in Paris to Guard Taliah Scott and the Baylor Bears, then to an unranked West Virginia team that only had five players due to six ejections. To make matters worse, Duke went 2-4 in their next six games, with losses to three ranked opponents and an unranked South Florida team. Yikes. 

   You may be thinking, “How does a team that made the Elite Eight last year crumble apart to unranked opponents?” The simple answer is that Lawson had a generational fumble during the off-season. Duke lost a star player, Oluchi Okananwa.

   Oluchi Okananwa is the Dearica Hamby of Duke. She came off the bench her first year, then won ACC Sixth Player of the Year. Came off the bench again in her second year, won MVP of the ACC Tournament, and kept coming off the bench. Moreover, Okananwa is a great scorer, and Duke is not a defense-first team. Similarly to Hamby, Okananwa decided enough was enough and decided to try out a new system in Maryland.

    After transferring to the Terrapin’s currently ranked No. 7 team in the country before her junior season, Okananwa is averaging career-highs in minutes, points, and field goal percentage, and just scored 25 in a double-overtime win over Minnesota. She is leveling up, and Duke is only getting worse without her. 

    Lawson stated in a press conference after their loss to LSU that Duke “just [doesn’t] have a lot of guards right now.” The guards that Duke does have, like Ashlon Jackson, are now expected to carry a large load offensively and compensate for the loss of Okananwa. There is no depth in Durham.

   The worst part is that Duke has yet to start ACC play, a conference that guarantees more ranked opponents, such as Notre Dame and Louisville, whom they will face later. If things stay the same, it will be a long season for the Blue Devils.