Game Commentary: Blame placed on seniors, but there's more to it

NORFOLK, Va. -- What happened to the women's basketball last night was a damn shame.

 

  The loss to Minnesota in the Elite Eight was a lot of things--disappointing, heartbreaking, a good basketball game--but more than anything else, it was a damn shame.

 

  Yeah, Duke got outplayed, and when it comes down to it, Alana Beard and Iciss Tillis--the team's go-to seniors and its heart and soul--deserve most of the culpability. But at some point, it stops being about basketball. Seriously. I know that's a trite thing to say, but it's true.

 

  There is a point, I think, where blaming Alana for shooting 4-of-14 from the field and pressing Iciss on where her head was in the first half, becomes less and less crucial to understanding the moment.

Seconds before the final buzzer sounded on their collegiate careers, Beard, Tillis and fellow senior Vicki Krapohl weren't watching the action on the court.

Here's the thing, though: you can look at these players as athletes or as a bunch of statistics. Or you can look at them as people and as members of a team--a family, really, to use Krapohl's post-game language.

 

  The former view, it turns out, is much easier from afar.

 

  Things change from the vantage point inside Duke's locker room. Monique Currie, No. 25, the 6-foot sophomore who had 19 points, seven rebounds and two turnovers and can bench press yada-yada-yada becomes Monique Currie, disappointed and frustrated as she curses under her breath on the way to the shower.

 

  Other details, too, are striking: the team manager sitting in a locker with her head down, nodding to herself. Sophomores Jessica Foley and Mistie Bass sitting side-by-side in the meeting room, legs resting on the chairs in front of them, speaking in hushed voices.

 

  And, of course, the reporters awkwardly approaching the players, positive that when they ask their dynamite questions, it won't be the third time that player has answered them tonight.

 

  But you really are looking at that family Krapohl was just talking about. This scene, this post-game ritual the players have experienced dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of times, over the last four years will be extinct in two hours. When you are talking to Krapohl, you are really looking at a member of a family, a family that will never play for Duke basketball again.

 

  Sure, there will be some team meetings and a banquet, but this team is done. The desperate search for the program's first national championship will have to wait until next winter.

 

  But Beard, Tillis, Krapohl and walk-on Kalita Marsh are out of shots, literally and figuratively. For them, it's all over.

 

  Gone is a group a friends, four years' worth of routines--an identity.

 

  Beard and Tillis will play in the WNBA next year if they want. Krapohl and Marsh have likely partaken in their last organized basketball.

 

  But for all four of them, there is no more playing in Cameron Indoor, no more building a program up, no more enjoying the life of a Division I college basketball player.

 

  As Krapohl says, "it's scary to think that for the first time in four years--15 years really--I won't be going to practice tomorrow."

Still, don't feel bad for these girls. They had their shot--three in fact--at a championship, and fell short.

 

  But how do you think Alana Beard felt last night and will feel today?

 

  Do you think the three three-pointers she missed in the last minute of the game haven't been seared into her memory? The image of her sobbing into Goestenkors' hug certainly won't be leaving my mind anytime soon.

 

  Just listen to Iciss.

 

  "You can't understand what it feels like to go out every single year thinking you're going to win the national championship," she said after the game. "It really hurts, especially when you love the game.

"Somebody [at Duke has] got to win one at some point," Tillis continued. "I will be praying to God everyday that next year it happens. Somebody's got to win sometime."