Fresh Success
Basketball rookies make major impact
Jim Sumner, GoDuke The Magazine
“I think each year is its own animal and you kind of look at your roster and see what it needs. We were able to finally find time to recruit high school players. When we got here, we couldn’t do that. The 2022-23 class was the first one we were able to recruit over a long period of time. I’d love to bring people in and have them for four years and develop them in the system. This class is definitely the best we’ve had in terms of talent.”
That’s Duke women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson at the beginning of the season talking about roster construction. It didn’t take long into the campaign for Lawson to realize that the talent she referenced was paying off on the court. Freshmen Jadyn Donovan, Oluchi Okananwa and Delaney Thomas quickly became rotation players and helped Duke back into the NCAA Tournament during a season many had dismissed as a rebuilding campaign.
Instead of rebuilding, Duke went 22-12 and reached the Sweet 16.
Lawson took over the Duke program under a unique intersection of challenging circumstances. Joanne McCallie’s last season ended when covid-19 canceled the 2020 NCAA Tournament. McCallie resigned in early July.
Lawson took over much too late to do any recruiting. Her first Duke team played only four games before shutting down the season over covid concerns.
There was significant roster attrition, something not unexpected. New coaches want to coach players they recruited, players want to play for coaches who recruited them. Lawson had never coached in the college ranks, so she had to establish recruiting networks. The transfer portal and NIL complicated matters.
She had to establish a competitive roster in a hurry and high school wasn’t the immediate way to go. Lawson brought in seven transfers for her first full season, four the following season — some grad transfers, some with multiple years of eligibility.
There were some misses but a lot more hits. Transfers like Celeste Taylor (Texas), Elizabeth Balogun (Louisville) and Kennedy Brown (Oregon State) helped Duke to a 26-7 mark and a second-place ACC finish in 2022-23.
But Lawson only brought in two transfers for this season, Taina Mair from Boston College and Camilla Emsbo from Yale.
Instead she filled gaps with the three aforementioned freshmen and classmates Jordan Wood and mid-season addition Louann Battiston, both of whom project as future contributors.
Lawson knew what she wanted from her first big freshman class — athletic players who would defend at a high level because they wanted to.
“I would say first I try to recruit players that already have the mentality,” she said. “It's hard to infuse that into somebody. We recruit players that are highly competitive and that have a mindset to work and to compete. Then it's my job to enhance that. I don't put it in them, they have it, God given. Parents put it in them. Youth league coaches, high school coaches put it in them, and then it's my job to enhance it and refine it.
“How do we do that? How do we enhance and refine the mentality? Well, that is teaching technique and teaching situations and schemes, and I have a very, very good elite assistant coaching staff that teaches the fundamentals of the game and watches film with our players and teaches them that. That's how it works. You have to have that (mentality) first, though.”
Defend first. But turn that defense into transition offense, live-ball turnovers, defensive rebounds, grab-and-go.
“We feel like that is something that our team is playing at their best when we play with pace, and we want them to be aggressive. We love them attacking. It kind of fuels us. We're an efficient team in transition when we run.”
This class of freshmen does that.
Donovan was the key signee. In fact ESPN’s third-ranked player from the class of 2023 is the highest-ranked player to ink with the program since Elizabeth Williams from the class of 2011.
Donovan was a McDonald’s All-American, a member of the 2023 USA U-19 team and the star of the Sidwell Friends team that captured two DC state titles.
Lawson’s take on Donovan?
“She’s a very smart player and she understands spacing. She’s also a very good finisher; she can finish right and left and reverse, come underneath and finish. So, that gives us a nice weapon on the back of the zone. Jadyn’s an elite athlete. Jadyn can guard multiple positions. We can switch with her. She can guard point guards. She can guard centers. That ability is something we've come to rely on. She’s got elite intelligence in terms of how to see the game and how to read and we want to keep giving her opportunities to impact the game.”
Donovan grabbed 15 rebounds against Syracuse, 10 against Wake Forest and Toledo.
She did all that as a six-foot power forward.
Duke center Kennedy Brown praises Donovan’s ability to thrive against bigger opponents.
“Jadyn’s extremely athletic, extremely explosive. She sees the floor very well. She’s a very versatile player and can play inside against a stronger matchup and do a lot for us.”
Like many freshmen Donovan says she had to catch up with the speed of the collegiate game and struggled with fouls during her rookie year.
“Game by game it slows down a little bit more. A big thing for me is knowing my personnel, knowing the scout, knowing who I'm playing against. I think that definitely slows down the game a bit, but yeah, when I first got here, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is super fast.’ So it's definitely a different type of pace for sure but I think game by game I'm getting better with slowing down the game in my brain.”
Donovan is far from a finished product. Playing in all 34 of Duke’s games, she never attempted a 3-pointer and made just under 40 percent of her foul shots, though she was consistently among the team leaders in blocks, steals and defensive rebounds.
One word defines Okananwa. That word is “energy.” Every conversation with or about her seems to include that word. She’s 5-10 but led Duke with over six rebounds per game. She would come off the bench and start running every chance she could, a one-woman fast break. She was selected the ACC’s sixth player of the year while logging 21 minutes per contest.
“Any time I step on the court, I don’t stop until the last play of the game.”
She also has skills. She made 35 percent of her 3-pointers, 75 percent of her foul shots. She scored 22 points in her debut against Richmond, grabbed 13 rebounds against Florida State.
“Oluchi is a talented player,” Lawson says. “She has been a consistent scorer for us, a consistent rebounder. When she's playing out there, it feels like she's at a different speed.”
Lawson prioritizes defense but she wants to turn that defense into instant offense, converting live-ball turnovers and defensive rebounds into grab-and-go scoring opportunities. She says Donovan and Okananwa learned that lesson early on.
“They’re very good at just starting the break and pushing it.”
Delaney Thomas doesn’t have the wow factor of Donovan and Okananwa. But the 6-3 forward from West Virginia (she prepped in D.C.) was Duke’s best player against some of the toughest competition. She had 14 points at Stanford, 13 points against top-ranked South Carolina and her team-high 19 points keyed a huge comeback in an overtime win over North Carolina.
Thomas came off the bench to spell Donovan. She says her goals are simple: “How I can impact the game, how I can affect the game in a positive way?”
Lawson sees big things in Thomas’s future.
“She’s my most mature freshman. She’s very focused, very disciplined, very mature. If you tell her to do 15 reps, she’s going to do 15. She might do 20. But she’s not going to cut corners. She’s going to put in the work to get better. She’s very consistent with knowing the scout. She’s in the right places because she studies. She has a mastery of the information that allows her to play instinctively.
“She’s very physical. She’s probably our most physical player, our strongest player. She’ll battle people. And she’s one of our best finishers. She’s a good athlete. She’s tough. She’s not intimidated. “
There was a lot of growing going on over the last five months.
“This is all learning opportunities,” Okananwa says. “I think between all the freshmen, we can all agree that we're taking everything and we're absorbing it. All of this stuff that's happening, we're not just letting it happen and then throwing it away. We're, okay, why did that happen? What can we learn from this?”
Lawson is pleased with the trend lines.
“They have just grown right before our eyes. What they have been able to navigate, I am just really proud of them and how they have been able to chase growth throughout the year. Even when we would lose a game, they would come into practice the next day as fired up, as ready to go (as if we had won). They are very coachable and so they are reaping some of those rewards of just staying coachable and playing hard.”
This story originally appeared in the 15.8 issue of GoDuke The Magazine – March 2024. Dedicated to sharing the stories of Duke student-athletes, present and past, GoDuke The Magazine is published for Duke Athletics by LEARFIELD with editorial offices at 3100 Tower Blvd., Suite 404, Durham, NC 27707. To subscribe, join the Iron Dukes or call (336) 831-0767.