WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- "A thousands mile journey begins with one step," so says the famous Lao-Tse proverb. Ominously for Duke (0-1), the women's basketball team began its arduous journey for its NCAA Championship by taking a step backwards, falling to No. 3 Texas (1-0) 85-77.
The Blue Devils began the season with arguably more options than any team in the nation. Nearly every player holds a resume filled with state player of the year and All-American honors in high school, and most have lived up to their substantial hype in college. This is a team with reigning ACC player-of-the-year Alana Beard, All-ACC first-teamer Iciss Tillis, future All-American Monique Currie, 2003 ACC All-Freshman first-teamers Lindsey Harding and Mistie Bass, and Brittany Hunter, who was largely considered the No. 1 high school senior in the country a year ago. Many expected the 2003-04 team to be able to fire away at teams from any direction on the court at any time.
But after Duke took a 69-68 lead over the Longhorns with 4:17 remaining in the game, the Blue Devils could not find a single player in their myriad talent that could buy a basket. Prior to this juncture, the game had been very sloppy, with the Blue Devils turning the ball over on five of their first six possessions and trailing the Longhorns 46-39. But Duke started the second half with an aggressive full-court press that translated to an 10-1 run that gave the Blue Devils a 49-47 advantage within two minutes. The score then oscillated between the No. 2 and No. 3 teams in the country until Duke took its final lead when it notched its 69th point.
But the Blue Devils did not score for the next 2:55, as the team played a predictable, often one-on-one game that Texas' help defense stymied. The examples are numerous:
- After Texas' Nina Norman hit a jumper to make the score 70-69, Beard threw a lob pass to Tillis into the post on a play that had worked throughout the game, a combination that lead to many of Tillis' 18 points and Hunter's 16. But the players at Texas are not stupid, and saw that this play could easily be stopped if a defender rotated in front of the hoop and negated the disadvantages of fronting the post.
Texas' Stacy Stephens executed this defensive technique to perfection when she slid across the lane and forced Tillis to fumble the pass out-of-bounds.
"At some point I think our team just decided that they needed to do better as a team defensively," Texas head coach Jody Conradt said. "They made it more difficult for [Tillis] to get the ball."
- After Duke finally netted another field goal when Beard connected on her fourth and last field goal with 1:22 remaining, Duke enacted its full court press that had been successful in getting the Blue Devils back into the game. But from learning from the earlier pressure, Texas easily weaved directly through the flailing Blue Devils, with Norman capping off the superb play by knocking down a jumper while drawing Jessica Fowley's fifth foul.
"I was most pleased by the fact that we did stay poised," Conradt said.
There were many more examples that could be analyzed with some depth in the last few minutes of the game--including one-on-one drives by Beard and Currie that led to clangs off the rim while the rest of the Blue Devils watched. But it would be ridiculous to be solely critical of the Duke performance, as the team was playing a Longhorn team with arguably more firepower than itself (The Longhorns have a nation-leading three Naismith candidates).
Beard also had one of the worst games of her career, shooting a wretched 4-for-17. Performances like those will soon be extinct for Duke, and the defiant Blue Devils are optimistic about moving past this game.
"We'll learn a great deal from this experience," Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors said. "We'll get better, we'll get smarter and go from here."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.