When Goestenkorsopolis rose out of the muddy remains of Krzyzewskiville and the Cameron Crazies created a bonfire for a Duke women's victory over North Carolina, it was hard not to notice the dramatic strides the sport has taken.
The game that was once on the fringes of college athletics has seen a meteoric rise. In recent years, the sport has become increasingly popular and is being followed by a growing contingent of fans and media alike.
Since 2002, the ESPN family of networks has broadcast all 63 games of the women's NCAA Tournament, and the public has responded. The 2004 championship game between Connecticut and Tennessee was at the time the highest-rated basketball game of any kind in ESPN's history.
And the Blue Devils have been at the forefront of the sport's rise. Duke's home attendance in 14 regular season games this year was 5,852-nearly double that of just seven seasons ago.
"It's a fun game to watch," Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors said. "I've had so many people e-mail me to tell me that we're more fun to watch than many other teams and some of the men's teams because we play such great team basketball."
For the first few years of Goestenkors' reign, her talented squads performed under the shadow of both the Duke men's team and national women's powerhouses like Connecticut and Tennessee.
Everything changed-including the future of the program-March 26, 1999, at the Final Four in San Jose, Calif.
That night, in front of a national audience, the Blue Devils upset three-time defending national champion Tennessee 69-63, ending the Lady Vols' 22-game tournament win streak.
Although the Blue Devils would lose by double digits to Purdue in the national championship game two nights later, people began to recognize that Duke's women basketball was a force to be reckoned with.
"Everybody in America got to see us beat Tennessee, which was David vs. Goliath basically," Goestenkors said. "If that game had not been on TV, some of our future recruits wouldn't have had the opportunity to see that and want to be a part of our program."
Goestenkors said the crucial victory against Tennessee was part of the reason the Blue Devils were able to successfully recruit future stars Alana Beard and Monique Currie.
As media attention grew, so too did fan interest. It was not long before marquee games against the likes of Tennessee and UConn sold out, giving Cameron Indoor Stadium the atmosphere of an intense men's game.
The two stars recruited in part by the television exposure, in turn, helped propel Duke to five straight Elite Eight appearances, including three trips to the Final Four. That run culminated in last year's appearance in the national championship game, in which the Blue Devils lost to Maryland in overtime.
"As we have grown and the media attention has grown at the same time, I think it's really helped our program along," Goestenkors said.
This year, five of Duke's games were broadcast on an ESPN network, and that does not even include Duke's two rematches against Maryland, which generated plenty of national media attention.
The result is a program that now not only has the respect of fellow coaches and programs, but also of the national media and its own fans.
"You can see women's basketball slowly climbing up in popularity as a sport," sophomore guard Abby Waner said. "Our success is carrying over to the student body and becoming more noticeable. It's just great to see the support we're getting right now."
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