DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — It wasn't that long ago that Duke looked lost, a preseason Atlantic Coast Conference favorite opening at 3-6 and reeling amid a demanding first-month schedule.
Yet Kara Lawson's belief didn't wane.
“I felt we were always good, or we were going to be good,” Lawson said. “When I say we were going to be good, that meant the result would start to turn.”
It sure has.
The Blue Devils have won 10 straight games, a run that includes an 8-0 start in league play and a return to the AP Top 25 this week at No. 21. And they have built some of the cohesion and consistency that showed in last year's run to the ACC Tournament title followed by a trip to the NCAA Elite Eight.
“I’m more proud that they — the players themselves — stuck together,” Lawson said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Because I can tell you this: There’s way more teams in the NCAA that would’ve folded or broken apart or played below their potential after what we went through.
“They had every reason to say, ‘Ah, this ain’t the year, we’ve just got too much going against us.’ ... And they didn’t. They just came into practice every day and said, ‘I’m going to get better.'”
That approach has gotten Duke back on course, both as an ACC contender and potential host for March Madness' opening weekend. The Blue Devils (13-6) enter Saturday's game at Pittsburgh — moved up a day due to an approaching winter storm — sitting alongside No. 8 Louisville atop the league standings.
Defense has been a calling-card identity for Duke under its sixth-year coach, who in September was named head coach for the U.S. women's team for the 2028 Olympics. Yet the offense has notably taken a step forward to go with it.
In ACC play, the Blue Devils are among the league leaders in scoring (fourth, 78.25), shooting percentage (third, 45.7%), 3-point percentage (third, 35.8%) and assist-to-turnover ratio (second, 1.29).
By comparison, Duke had averaged 65.52 points on 42.5% shooting, including 33.4% on 3s, with a 0.92 assist-to-turnover ratio in league regular-season games for the previous three seasons combined.
That bump has come while adjusting to multiple injuries, notably with third-year starter Jadyn Donovan missing the past month since a hard fall against South Dakota State, touted freshman Emilee Skinner playing just three games and senior reserve Emma Koabel lost to an offseason knee injury.
There were also changes such as playing post forwards Toby Fournier and Delaney Thomas more together. Or guard Riley Nelson returning to action after missing last season due to a knee injury suffered before she transferred from Maryland.
“I just think that at some point for us, it clicked,” said Nelson, whose move into the starting lineup coincided with the 10-game run. ”And we all started competing together, with each other, trying to find this team's identity ... and how that kind of all meshes.
"It just took us a minute to kind of figure that out."
Duke opened the season as the favorite to follow last year's first ACC Tournament title since 2013 with another, along with carrying a No. 7 ranking in the preseason AP Top 25.
A bumpy start raised eyebrows.
The Blue Devils fell to No. 14 Baylor in the Paris opener. They lost to No. 22 West Virginia, which played the second half with five players due to ejections after the teams had to be separated. They fell at South Florida.
Next came lopsided losses to No. 2 South Carolina and a third-ranked UCLA team playing without star Lauren Betts, followed by a Dec. 4 home loss to No. 6 LSU in the ACC/SEC Challenge that dropped Duke to an unthinkable 3-6.
Lawson took a largely positive tone after the LSU loss, pointing to seeing growth from her team and praising its competitive fight. Senior Ashlon Jackson tried to stay positive, too, even while acknowledging Duke was “in the mud right now.”
“It felt like the world was ending,” Jackson said this week with a chuckle.
Now?
“We know that going into March, going into February, we're going to be the team that has been through any and everything," Jackson said. "And on the flip side of that, we know that we can get through it.”
Little has changed for Lawson, though.
The 44-year-old coach who played for Pat Summitt at Tennessee before a long WNBA career relentlessly talks about dismissing outside expectations or opinions when working toward goals. That's been true in good times, like Duke getting within a game of last year's Final Four, and it remained the case amid trouble, too.
Instead, Lawson focused on what she saw on film. In practices. In internal analytics data. It all told her the Blue Devils were better than their early record.
“What allows me to be optimistic like that is I knew what I was seeing,” she said. “And then my job was to relay what I was seeing to them. My job is to be a truthteller for the players. ... They're smart, I don't BS them. I wasn't trying to trick them: ‘Hey, let me trick them to make them think we’re good until we get good.'
“No, we were good. So I had to explain why we were good, and what the numbers were saying."
In that regard, maybe it's as simple as the results have finally caught up with its process.
"Now I think we’ve figured out how we need to play,” Lawson said. “That doesn’t mean we’ll win every game the rest of the season. But we have started to play some really good complementary basketball.”
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball
FILE - Head coach Kara Lawson looks on during a training camp for the U.S women's national basketball team, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in Durham, N.C. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley,File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel and Iran exchanged fire early Wednesday as Tehran kept up its pressure on the region's oil industry, hitting a ship in the Strait of Hormuz and targeting infrastructure as concerns grew of a global energy crisis.
Iran has effectively stopped shipping traffic through the narrow strait off its coast, through which about a fifth of the world's oil is shipped from the Persian Gulf toward the Indian Ocean. It has also been targeting oil fields and refineries in Gulf Arab nations as part of a strategy that appeared to be aimed at generating enough global economic pain to pressure the United States and Israel to end their strikes.
Early Wednesday, Kuwait said its defenses had downed eight Iranian drones over the oil-rich nation and Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted five drones heading toward the kingdom's vast Shaybah oil field. A projectile hit a container ship off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel, which launched the war with the United States on Feb. 28, said it had had begun a new wave of attacks on Tehran, following multiple strikes the day before that residents described as some of the heaviest during the war. Explosions were also heard in Beirut and in southern Lebanon after Israel said it had started a new assault on targets related to the Iran-linked militia Hezbollah.
The attacks set a building ablaze in central Beirut in the densely populated Aicha Bakkar area, engulfing the top two floors of the multistory structure in flames. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the strike, which came without warning.
An earlier Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed five people in the Nabatieh district, while two more were killed in strikes in the Tyre district and the Bint Jbeil district, Lebanon's Health Ministry said. A Red Cross worker also died early Wednesday of wounds sustained Monday, when his team was hit by an Israeli strike while they were rescuing people from an earlier attack.
Nearly 500 people have been killed so far in Lebanon since Hezbollah triggered the latest round of fighting with Israel when it fired rockets into the country’s north after the American and Israeli attacks on Iran started.
Israel warned of three Iranian attacks across the country early Wednesday, with sirens heard in Tel Aviv and elsewhere but no immediate reports of casualties.
In addition to targeting Saudi Arabia's oil fields, the kingdom's defense ministry said it had destroyed six ballistic missiles launched toward Prince Sultan Air Base, a major U.S.- and Saudi-operated air facility in eastern Saudi Arabia. The ministry also said it intercepted and destroyed two drones over Hafar al-Batin, a major city in the eastern province.
In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran hit a container ship with a projectile off Ras al-Khaimah, the UAE’s northern-most emirate on the strait, according to a monitoring site run by the British military.
It said the “extent of the damage is currently unknown but under investigation by the crew.”
The United Arab Emirates said early Wednesday that its air defenses were working to intercept incoming Iranian fire. The wealthy Gulf nation — home to the business and travel hub of Dubai — said Iranian attacks have killed six people and wounded 122 others there.
Bahrain sounded sirens early Wednesday, warning of an incoming Iranian attack. The warnings came a day after an Iranian attack hit a residential building in the capital, Manama, and killed a 29-year-old woman and wounding eight people.
Oil prices remained well below the peaks hit on Monday but the price of Brent crude, the international standard, was still up some 20% Wednesday from when the war began, and consumers around the world are already feeling the pain at the pump.
The spike in oil prices has been rocking financial markets worldwide because of worries that the war could block the global flow of oil and natural gas for a long time.
Amin Nasser, the president and CEO of Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco, warned on Tuesday that if oil tankers continue to be unable to transit the strait “that will have a serious impact on the global economy.”
The U.S. military said Tuesday it had destroyed 16 Iranian minelayers near the Strait of Hormuz, though U.S. President Donald Trump said in social media posts that there were no reports yet of Iran mining the passage, a prospect that experts warned of in the buildup to the war.
In addition to the nearly 500 people killed in Lebanon, Iran has said more than 1,300 people have been killed there and Israel has reported 12 people dead.
The U.S. has lost seven soldiers while another eight have suffered severe injuries.
Many foreign nationals have been getting out of the Persian Gulf region since the war began, including over 45,000 U.K. citizens, the British Foreign Office said. Some 40,000 people returned to the United States, according to the State Department.
Magdy reported from Cairo, and Rising from Bangkok. Associated Press writers Sally Abou AIJoud in Beirut, Giovanna Dell’Orto in Miami, Julie Watson in San Diego,
People take shelter in an underground metro station as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strike, in Ramat Gan, Israel, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
A man passes in front of a destroyed building that housed a branch of Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a non-bank financial institution run by Hezbollah, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People walk past closed shops at the nearly empty traditional main bazaar in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Motorbikes drive past a billboard depicting Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, handing the country’s flag to his son and successor Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, right, as the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stands at left, in a square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
