Thanksgiving week tournaments end in feast of top-25 matchups, impacting national rankings
The most exciting week of the non-conference season — and most frustrating for finding games across multiple obscure streaming platforms — provided plenty of interesting games and outcomes during the holiday week.
It included one ACC side taking care of all comers and another coming off a high from week three and falling hard in week four. All part of a shakeup in the rankings after the fourth week of college basketball.
Others receiving votes: NC State 58, Georgia Tech 33, Stanford 28, Tennessee 16, Oregon 15, Florida St. 14, Richmond 13, Mississippi St. 11, Vanderbilt 8, Baylor 6, Utah 5, Harvard 4, South Dakota St. 4, Creighton 3, Minnesota 3.
On November 10, the Duke Blue Devils lost a close away game to the then No. 18 ranked Maryland Terrapins. After upsetting Ohio State in the NCAA tournament eight months prior, Duke started the season 0-1 against ranked opponents.
After two weeks of defeating unranked opponents, including a consistent mid-major tournament team in the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, the No. 11 Blue Devils had a rough test ahead of themselves heading to Nevada for the Ball Dawgs Classic.
Head Coach Kara Lawson’s team passed, defeating the No. 9 Kansas State Wildcats and No. 8 Oklahoma Sooners.
Against Kansas State, the Wildcats went out to a 14-4 run but the Blue Devils didn’t stay down for long. Leading the comeback was Ashlon Jackson’s career day, which started with 16 points in the second quarter. Combine that with Duke allowing only four field goals from the Wildcats and the Blue Devils built a lead they never relinquished.
Jackson went on to score 30 points in the 73-62 win, the first time a Blue Devil hit the 30-point mark since 2019.
Monday was the opening act and Wednesday was the main event, with Reigan Richardson stepping into the spotlight against the Sooners.
Similar to Monday’s win, the Blue Devils started slow and mounted an early comeback. Duke maintained a lead for much of the game, and had a 15-point second half lead that Payton Verhulst helped erase at the buzzer. That’s when the guard scored three of her team-leading 29 points to put the game into overtime.
Richardson and Duke responded in a big way, when the Blue Devils’ star scored 10 of her 35 points in the 109-99 victory. Richardson’s performance earned the tournament MVP trophy in a week that put Duke back in the top 10 for the first time since the 2022-23 season.
Life doesn’t get much easier in week five when they face the South Carolina Gamecocks on the road for the SEC-ACC Challenge. Duke has four straight losses to Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks.
Things didn’t look good for No. 17 TCU women’s basketball in the second half against No. 3 Notre Dame on Friday. With 13 minutes remaining, the Fighting Irish had a 14-point lead and it looked like their undefeated start to the season was ready to add another number to the win column.
The Horned Frogs weren’t phased.
TCU went on an eight-point run and in the fourth quarter outscored Notre Dame 31-12 to pull away for a program record-tying win against a No. 3 ranked team, the highest the Big 12 side has ever beaten.
Leading the charge was transfer guard Hailey Van Lith, who had 19 of her 21 points in the second half, nine of which coming in the final 10 minutes. Included in the stellar scoring performance were seven assists, as Van Lith’s career season in her final year continues.
After playing a more subdued role with the LSU Tigers last season, in Van Lith’s first season with TCU she averages a career high 19.9 points and 7.1 assists per game. A far cry from her previous high of 3.6 assists per season with the Tigers.
Fellow transfer graduate senior Sedonna Prince also became the first player in NCAA history to have at least 20 points, 20 rebounds and eight blocks against a top five team in the nation.
Sent that one back to the states @sedonaprince_ | #GoFrogs pic.twitter.com/A3ANcVgIJA
— TCU Women’s Basketball (@tcuwbb) November 29, 2024
It all contributed to a final quarter where the Irish struggled to hit shots. Notre Dame went 5-of-20 from the floor and missed all three attempts from beyond the arc in the fourth quarter and the Horned Frogs pulled away with a 76-86 victory.
The win over Notre Dame, and subsequent victory over the USF Bulls on Saturday, move the Horned Frogs up to No. 9 in this week’s ranking.
TCU’s ranking is the highest in program history, eclipsing a No. 13 ranking in February of 2004.
The Fighting Irish were riding high after their trip to Los Angeles on Nov. 23, defeating the then-No. 3 ranked USC Trojans, but fell hard in week four. After the TCU comeback, things got worse.
Notre Dame finished off their time in the Cayman Islands with a loss to the unranked Utah Utes. Despite going into halftime up five points, Utah had a 15-0 run that stretched from before to after halftime.
The Utes outscored the Irish 46-30 in the second half to cruise to a 78-67 win.
In the defeat, the star backcourt duo of Hannah Hidalgo and Olivia Miles struggled to hit their stride offensively. The two combined to go 8-of-24 from the field, with Miles scoring a season low eight points. Hidalgo had only the second game of her career without an assist, and the first this season.
Head coach Niele Ivey’s team had not lost two games in a row since February of 2021 when the Irish lost conference games against Louisville and Clemson to end the 20-21 season.
From here the road doesn’t get much easier for the Notre Dame. There are no non-conference games against a mid-major to try and shake off the rust of two draining defeats. Thursday, the Irish welcome the Texas Longhorns to South Bend for the SEC-ACC Challenge. One week later, they welcome the UConn Huskies to end a brutal stretch of games where four of six opponents are ranked in the top-25.
