Gingrich, VanGorp combine to rout Seminoles

On an otherwise lackluster night for the women's basketball team, a very bright spot for the Blue Devils came from highly-touted freshman Krista Gingrich. Showing the form that made her a coveted recruit coming out of high school, Gingrich teamed with center Michele VanGorp to form a deadly inside-outside scoring combination. Both players finished the game with a team-high 22 points, scoring nearly half of Duke's 91 points. "You can either choose to shut down me and Payton, or you can choose to shut down Krista, Hilary [Howard] and Nicole [Erickson]," VanGorp said. Gingrich impressed the Cameron crowd with her hot outside shooting, knocking down eight of 11 shots including five-of-seven from behind the arc. Displaying near perfect form, Gingrich hit nothing but net on most of her buckets. "I just think Michele did a good job of sensing the double team," Gingrich said. "They're not that hard to hit when there's nobody guarding you." After building a 17-point cushion early in the first half, Duke allowed Florida State to cut the lead down to six with 2:25 left before intermission. At that point, coach Gail Goestenkors made a key substitution and sent Gingrich into the game. Gingrich proceeded to score eight points-including two big three-pointers-in the span of just under 100 seconds, giving her team a 46-32 advantage going to the break. "I feel right now that my position on this team is to come off the bench and provide a spark," Gingrich said. "If I can do that offensively, [by] hitting the three and just getting everyone pumped up, that's what I'm going to try to do." Gingrich also helped ease the scoring burden a bit for VanGorp and Erickson, who turned in another excellent showing in a recent series of fine offensive performances. On a night in which Howard struggled a bit from the floor, and Georgia Schweitzer couldn't seem to get going offensively, Gingrich was the lift that Duke needed to put the game out of reach for the Seminoles. Coming into the game, Gingrich had played solid, if not spectacularly, in her role as a reserve. In Duke's first seven games, she had hit just 31 percent of her field goals and was averaging 6.3 points. There was never any question that Gingrich could shoot from behind the arc, however. Despite her low field-goal percentage, Gingrich was still shooting a red-hot 47 percent on her three pointers. "We knew exactly what she could do," Florida State coach Sue Semrau said. "I have seen her play a lot in high school. She's a great shooter and I think she had an exceptional game. For a freshman to come out in her first ACC game and shoot the way she did... I thought she showed a lot of poise." Indeed, such poise under pressure for a freshman is rare, and it is something that Gingrich also looks to contribute to the team this year. In the much-publicized season opener against No. 1 Connecticut, Gingrich turned in a very positive performance in an otherwise disappointing game for the Blue Devils. She seemed to maintain her composure in the nationally televised game, despite the loss. Duke and Gingrich will face another test of their poise and composure this Sunday against three-time defending national champion Tennessee in Orlando.