Kira Orr likes to do things one way on the basketball court: fast.
Her quickness up the court helped the women's basketball team get off to the fastest start in the history of the program this year. Orr has been the playmaker and much more for the No. 22 Blue Devils (17-5, 8-4 in the Atlantic Coast Conference)
"I like to push the ball up the court," Orr said. "I'm a push guard and I like a fast-paced game more than I like setting up a quarter-court offense. I'm not saying when I get in the quarter-court that I don't think I can do it. It's that I'm better in a fast-break type of game."
Orr ranked fourth in the ACC in assists with 4.5 prior to Sunday's game with UVa. She had also averaged 2.0 steals per game, good enough for ninth in the conference.
In the Blue Devils' 67-61 loss to the Cavaliers, Orr proved she could do more than setup her teammates and swipe her opponents. She led Duke in scoring with 17 points while grabbing eight rebounds and dishing out three assists.
In the team's first meeting with Virginia earlier this season, she also scored 17 points. In that contest, Orr sank seven of 14 shots, handed out six assists and collected five rebounds.
But before she learned to stuff the stat sheet, Orr filled her time playing other sports. In her hometown of Poolesville, Md., Orr played soccer and softball along with basketball, but she knew even then that the game she'd started playing in third grade was her favorite.
"Basketball was the best," Orr said. "It felt the most natural."
From the beginning, Orr learned to play the game at a quick pace. A lot of that had to do with her competition. Orr grew up playing in boys' leagues. Even after there were girls' leagues for her at the junior high level, Orr continued to play on boys' teams until high school.
In high school, Orr decided the academics and the basketball team at The Bullis School in Potomac, Md., made the most sense for her. At Bullis, she blossomed into a fourth-team Parade All-American from the shooting guard spot.
Want to take a guess at the pace at which her high school team played?
"We were always fast breaking," Orr said. "We didn't like to get into a half-court offense much, and when we did, it was very free-flowing."
She ran her summer Amateur Athletic Union team at the same pace from the point guard spot. The shift from scorer--Orr averaged 19.2 points per game her senior season and set a school record for total career points--to setup artist actually pleased her.
"I've never been one to love scoring," Orr said. "I like to pass the ball to someone else for the score. I like to dribble and have the ball in my hands."
Orr had the ball in her court when Stanford, Virginia and Georgia Tech came calling for her services. But Duke felt the most comfortable to Orr, and so she accepted the challenge of being part of head coach Gail Goestenkors' first recruiting class.
"[Goestenkors] said, `I have a strong belief that if you put your heart to it, and time and effort, we will be good, and I want you to believe,"' Orr said. "And I did that."
Duke took off like Orr does--quickly. The Blue Devils won their first seven games and 10 of their first 11 last season. But four consecutive losses late in the season caused the team to miss out on an NCAA tournament bid that seemed likely only weeks earlier.
Orr played over 17 minutes a game last season, backing up senior point guard Missy Anderson. Looking back, Orr said she found ACC play to be just as tough as she had expected it would be, based on games she saw at Maryland during her senior year of high school.
"Then, about how the season ended, I just learned that I don't want to feel that again," Orr said. "We were in a position where if we won our last couple of games, we could have gone to the tournament. And we folded."
After such an ending, this season couldn't come soon enough for the Blue Devils and Orr. Now, rather than savor the team's newfound success, Orr is quick--surprise--to point out that the squad has yet to accomplish its three main goals.
"We're three wins away from a 20-win season," Orr said. "I definitely feel we can finish in the top three of the ACC and with that, I'm almost sure it would see us go to the NCAA tournament."
For a program that went 12-15 and 3-13 in the ACC just two years ago, that's a fast turnaround. Then again, that's just how Orr likes it.
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