In her speech on senior night, Abby Waner reminisced about her ambitious goals when she entered Duke as the Gatorade and McDonald's National Player of the Year four years ago.
"When I first came to Duke, and Keturah Jackson and I were on our visit together, we decided we were going to win four national championships in four years," the senior guard said.
One national championship loss and two Sweet 16 exits later, Waner is finding that such a task is not as simple as it sounds.
And now, after three postseasons of frustration, the senior guard faces her final opportunity to raise Duke's first national title banner to the rafters of Cameron Indoor Stadium.
"You don't want to look back and say that you should have done something differently," Waner said.
She learned that lesson well the final game of her freshman season, when the Blue Devils watched ACC rival Maryland celebrate its overtime victory in the national championship game. Duke let a 13-point lead slip away en route to a 78-75 overtime loss.
"The only thing that I will say for now, that I learned from that game, is knowing that I never want to feel that again," Waner said. "I still haven't watched the game and I'm not planning on it. I mean, that's just such a raw emotion, and when something is taken from you, that's when you learn how much it means to you."
The senior guard has achieved great statistical success throughout her four years in Durham. She holds a Duke record with 211 career 3-point field goals. She has been named to the All-ACC team each of the past three seasons. She has helped lead the Blue Devils to 112 wins in her career, including a perfect 30-0 regular season as a sophomore.
But she has yet to cut down the nets in early April, and has yet to live up to her own lofty expectations.
"You learn here that it is not only about results," Waner said. "That being said, that can also be a cop-out for someone who hasn't had a result."
Despite a drop in statistical output each of the past two seasons, Waner has grown in immeasurable ways that could finally push her team over the top.
"Shooting percentage doesn't mean a thing," Duke head coach Joanne P. McCallie said about keys to success in the postseason. "The point is it's the hustle plays, it's the maturity, the leadership, it's time and score. It's a lot of subtleties."
Trailing 78-76 with less than a minute left in overtime against North Carolina Sunday, Waner showed a tremendous understanding of all of the above. Putting the emotions of senior night and her 14 consecutive missed field goal attempts behind her, she calmly set her feet and hit a deep 3-pointer from right in front of the Duke bench.
That shot ended a four-game losing streak to the Tar Heels.
As the Tournament nears, Waner finally has a different kind of shot-a shot to end a long history of Blue Devil futility, which includes 34 years without a national title.
"The way that I function is that I set standards for myself, and the only way you can really do that most of the time is by quantifiable things, and I don't have a national championship yet," Waner said. "To feel some form of worth in my own eyes, I would need a national championship."
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