Virginia Tech Women's Basketball Drops Difficult ACC Opener at Duke

After winning seven of their first nine games, the Virginia Tech women's basketball team drew a very difficult ACC opener on Sunday afternoon. The Hokies, the defending regular season ACC champs, opened up conference play at Duke and got a first-hand look at just how good the Blue Devils are in 2024-25 with a tough loss.

It was evident from the opening tip that Virginia Tech was going to have trouble with Duke's pressure and that was the case. First-year coach Megan Duffy started Mackenzie Nelson in preparation for the Blue Devils pressure, but the Hokies still turned the ball over 12 times in the opening half. To compound matters, Blue Devils' freshman Toby Fournier scored 13 first-half points and finished with 27 points. Virginia Tech only scored eight first-quarter points and trailed 38-22 at halftime.

To Virginia Tech's credit, they came out of halftime and cut the deficit down to 10 points multiple times, but in the end, Duke had just too much offensive power and defensive pressure. They forced the Hokies into unforced turnovers and defended so well that they forced tough shots by Tech against the end of the shot clock. Virginia Tech finished with 18 turnovers as a team, which is not going to get it done in any game.

Carleigh Wenzel finished with a team-high 19 points, but she had eight turnovers herself. Carys Baker had 11 points and six rebounds, while Samyha Suffren had 10 points and six rebounds. Duke contained Rose Micheaux who had eight points and five rebounds. Virginia Tech shot 43.6% from the field and made just one of seven 3-point attempts. Duke shot 51.6% from the field and 47.1% from behind the arc.

This was a tough ACC opener, but there is a lot of good that Duffy and her staff can take from this from a learning prespective. The conference is going to grind on a nightly basis and they are a young team that will get better as the season goes along.