CHARLOTTE - Saddled with a team that lost two of its best players to graduation, women's basketball coach Gail Goestenkors has done many things right in guiding the Blue Devils to their first Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title in the program's 22-year history.
She can diagram plays for her players to get open shots and stress the importance of crashing the defensive boards and boxing out. However, three things Goestenkors cannot do are catch passes, make layups and uncontested two-footers and box out for her players.
Saturday afternoon, Goestenkors could only look on helplessly as her players fumbled away pinpoint passes, missed layups and gave the Tar Heels numerous second chances by failing to control the defensive boards.
In the Blue Devils' 56-52 loss to UNC in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament Saturday, their three tallest regulars-Michele VanGorp, Payton Black and Lauren Rice-combined for a mind-boggling 1-for-15 from the floor.
"There's the game right there," Goestenkors said. "If we can't make a righthanded layup, we don't deserve to win the game. Our three biggest post players-Peppi [Browne] did a good job, [shooting] 4-for-4-but other than that, one-for-15, that's not the mark of a championship team. It's very frustrating. We'll be working on that over the next two weeks."
With 11 minutes still remaining, and Duke in the midst of a 10-4 run, guard Hilary Howard slashed through the lane, drew a crowd of defenders and found a wide-open VanGorp under the basket for what would have been an easy two points. VanGorp fumbled away the chest-high pass and eventually recovered the ball, but by then three defenders had converged on her. She passed it off, received another pass and then turned the ball over.
With less than two minutes left in the game and Carolina holding a one-point lead at 51-50, guard Nicole Erickson whipped a pinpoint pass to a cutting Black right underneath the basket. Black turned and failed to convert the uncontested layup.
A little more than a minute later, Duke desperately needed a basket trailing by three with 23 seconds remaining. Rice recovered a deflected three-point shot by Erickson, drove into a wide-open lane and promptly threw the layup off the under-side of the rim.
Even more frustrating for the Blue Devils, UNC committed to a spread zone defense in the second half designed to deny the Blue Devils open shots from the perimeter and, in effect, open up the inside.
"At halftime, I just told my team no weak-side defense, no help-side defense, just stay with your man, spread out and everybody stay one-on-one," Tar Heels coach Sylvia Hatchell said. "So that way, we stayed out and kept their outside shooters from having so many open looks, and I think it worked."
That strategy only worked because Duke kept missing shots from the inside. For the game, Black, Rice and VanGorp missed 10 shots from inside of seven feet.
"They went to a 2-3 zone and we got great looks at the basket," Goestenkors said. "I was so happy when they went to a 2-3 zone; I think our players were too... I was happy they went to the zone because it took the pressure off our guards. We had trouble really getting into our offense when they were man-to-man."
Another area where Duke's tallest regulars were undoubtedly beaten was rebounding. In a combined 38 minutes, Black and VanGorp combined for five rebounds and, furthermore, allowed the Tar Heels to control the offensive boards in the second half. UNC outrebounded Duke 10-2 on the offensive glass in the final 20 minutes and outscored Duke 8-0 in that stretch on second-chance points.
"[The Tar Heels] did a great job, especially on the boards in the second half," Goestenkors said. "They're so good, you can't give them second opportunities at the basket."
On a Carolina possession early in the second half, guard Jessica Gaspar drove the baseline and missed a 10-footer, and then a Tar Heel intrasquad volleyball game ensued. UNC freshman LaQuanda Barksdale recovered the rebound, missed the putback, grabbed the rebound again and missed again. All this before Tracy Reid snatched the third offensive rebound of the possession and converted to give UNC a 31-30 lead.
Three possessions later, Carolina again had multiple chances at the Duke basket. Reid misfired from the free-throw line, and somehow, the 5-foot-7 Gaspar snuck in for the offensive rebound. Although Gaspar missed the reverse lay-in, Nicole Walker corralled the rebound and her putback gave Carolina its only points in the middle of a 7-2 Duke run.
The Blue Devils themselves, however, are by no means out of second chances. They will have a chance to redeem themselves in the NCAA Tournament in two weeks.
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