ROCK HILL, S.C.--Normally, when a basketball team gets demolished by 25 points, its players hang their heads in shame for the next few days.
However, the women's basketball team has no reason to be ashamed after the disappointing 95-70 loss it suffered to arch-rival North Carolina (28-4) in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament final here Sunday.
While the loss to the No. 10 Tar Heels was no doubt disappointing for Duke (21-8), merely the Blue Devils' presence in the title game was history-making. No. 21 Duke had never won more than one game in an ACC tournament. Before this year, it had only won its first-round game two times since Duke began participating in the tournament in 1978.
The Blue Devils stopped a late-season slide with their first-round tournament victory over Clemson on Friday afternoon. Last year--after suffering a similar end-of-season downfall--Duke dropped its first ACC tournament game to Maryland, failing to gain a bid for the NCAA tournament.
"We had this tradition of playing poorly at the end," junior center Alison Day said. "Duke basketball is different than it has been in the past few years. Everybody stepped up [against Clemson]."
But although the Blue Devils achieved two of their season goals (a 20-win season and a first-round victory in the ACC tournament) by defeating Clemson, that game was not the highlight of the weekend for Duke. Led by point guard Kira Orr, the Blue Devils pulled off a shocking upset, knocking off regular-season ACC champion Virginia, 83-82, in overtime.
So when the team went into the game against UNC, it was riding a wave of emotion. Both the wins over Clemson and No. 9 Virginia were exciting, come-from-behind victories. The Blue Devils showed a lot of heart in those two games, making up for terrible first-half performances.
Since the win over the Cavaliers was inarguably the biggest win in the program's history, Duke found it hard to top that performance off with another big upset on Sunday.
"There's only so many times you can [come from behind]," Day said Saturday after the UVa game. "It shows that we have a lot of heart, but tomorrow we need to come out and take control of the game from the start and quit making it so hard on ourselves."
The Blue Devils tried their best to keep it close against the Tar Heels, and they did so for the first half. Duke shot an amazing 62 percent from the field, and grabbed 13 defensive boards to keep the game close.
"We thought we played a good half of basketball," Orr said. "We knew that if we kept doing what we were doing, we could win this game. We beat them before by keeping them out of their transition."
But this time, the Blue Devils were not able to maintain their intensity throughout the second half. Carolina's defense disrupted Duke, and the Tar Heels got their transition game back, nearly turning the contest into a track meet.
"In the second half, we tried to play better defense," UNC head coach Sylvia Hatchell said. "They were making all their shots so they were able to go down there and set their defense. We were able to get our transition game going, which was in our favor."
So the Blue Devils let the Tar Heels run away with the tournament title on Sunday. UNC's dynamic duo of Charlotte Smith and Marion Jones proved to be too much for Duke, as Smith notched 25 points and 15 boards, while Jones scored 23.
"We can't stop them," Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors said. "We had nothing left to try to stop those two."
Yet even in defeat, the Blue Devils had much to be proud of in the conference tournament. Orr garnered first-team All-ACC tournament honors, while Day made the second team.
And Duke finally proved that it can win in the postseason, but perhaps more importantly, it showed that it can hang with some of the toughest teams in the nation--a feat that will undoubtedly help the players when the NCAA tournament starts next weekend.
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