The walks to Cameron took absurdly long. Even in the unseasonably warm Durham winter the walk almost seemed like a death march. She dreaded it.
She couldn't remember the last time it had ever felt like this. It wasn't even a game anymore-it was battle. And she was losing.
Inside Cameron there was little comfort. There was the picture on the wall she had taken before the season started. In October, she alone knew the tumult her easy smile belied. On the way to the locker room, she glanced down to the far end of the court where less than a year ago her jump shot in the waning seconds of the N.C. State game delivered Duke its first and only ACC regular season crown. She didn't know if she would ever be able to do that again.
In life they say the greatest tragedy is when a father outlives his son. Nicole Erickson had just discovered the athletic equivalent-she had outlived her own career. At 22, she wondered if the best days of her career may have been behind her.
"I knew that I was better than that," she said. "I kept reverting to all the hard work I had done, and it would get me so angry. Playing was not fun anymore.
"Basketball used to be my escape from stress. It was my refuge from everything. During this time, I had no escape and no refuge. I was miserable and depressed basically 24-7. Practice was a mental hell for me."
It's one of those words you'd never know until it describes you. Plantarfascitis. During the summer Erickson had torn the tendon between her fascia pad and the heel. Without taking months off, the injury would not heal, but worsen as scar tissue built up. The good news was doctors said she could play through it. The bad news was she didn't know if they were right.
As the season started with Duke at its highest point ever, No. 4 in the nation, Erickson felt as if she was on the outside looking in.
"I was very apprehensive," she said. "I would talk to Coach about it and she would say, 'It'll come. You've been playing basketball too long and too well for it just to disappear.' At that point, my injury was really bad. It was very painful and draining."
She went to bed every night in a splint and woke up every morning in pain. Already known as one of the hardest workers on the team, her workouts got even harder. Shoot-arounds got longer, sprints lengthier. Rehab started an hour before every practice-an ultrasound on her heel and then into the whirlpool. Every other day there was ionto treatment, electrical therapy to reduce the buildup of scar tissue.
Erickson's teammates tried to keep her involved, but they could tell she wasn't the same player.
"You could see how frustrated she was," Hilary Howard said. "We knew it was going to take some time."
There were still good days, when the pain wasn't quite so debilitating, the bounces went her way and the rigors of rehab didn't dominate her day. There was the MVP of the Duke Classic and a then-team season-high 19 points against Vanderbilt.
But the slump wore on. Coaches and teammates grew worried. And just when it seemed the end was in sight, salvation moved that much farther away. After an 11-point performance against Hampton, Goestenkors encouraged her guard to keep shooting to keep her confidence up.
What Goestenkors didn't know then, and what Erickson only suspected, was that the storm was far from over. Hampton was just the eye.
Days later it was back to the beginning. She sat out home games against Temple and UNC-Asheville as a precaution, to rest her injured foot before the strain of the ACC schedule.
But the two weeks off caused more problems than they solved. Erickson's foot improved, but her mental focus faded. She didn't concentrate on winning; she concentrated on not losing.
"I got worried and frustrated all over again," Erickson said. "The team was playing so well, I thought that when I came back, I'd disrupt the flow."
Her first game back, at UCLA, was supposed to be a celebration. Erickson was making a trip home and playing in front of the local crowd. Rebounding from the Tennessee loss to inch its way back toward the nation's elite, Duke was about to have the second take of its coming-out party.
All went according to plan-for about 40 seconds. Before the first minute could tick off the clock Erickson went down. This time it was her knee. The numbers told the story: one minute, no field goals. But even they didn't convey the frustration she felt.
The days following the UCLA game were rock bottom. An emotional Erickson found herself in tears over just about anything. She wasn't playing, she wasn't practicing, she barely recognized her life.
"I felt like I was way back at square one," Erickson said. "No, I felt like I was at negative square one. Right then I was so mentally out of whack."
Her only solace was the success of the team. The Blue Devils had won eight of the last nine. Duke rolled on, but for Erickson it seemed hollow.
She tried to take a secondary role, anything to help the team, she told herself. But it didn't work. Her appearances were sporadic, her play uneven. For every up there was a down. And as the downs got bigger the ups became fewer and farther between.
Misses triggered bouts of self-doubt. Duke's single-season three-point leader thought twice before shooting. Even success brought expectations of the next miss. Erickson's All-ACC season was spiraling downward at an incomprehensible rate.
"Throughout the whole time that's all I would think about, the fact that I wasn't performing the way I knew I could," she said. "It was a circle. I'd say, 'I'm so much better than this.' And then I would make a mistake, and all this negative stuff would come back."
After the Wake Forest game, Erickson knew it was now or never. She talked to her father. She talked to a former coach. She spent the night before the Clemson game focusing on what she had to do. She knew the ability was there; all she had to do was prove it to herself.
"[My father and coach] were challenging me and telling me, 'Are you going to be a quitter and give up or are you going to stop being selfish and pitiful and just play?'" Erickson said. "I was always asking myself, 'Why am I being so selfish?' They made me decide."
She decided to do what had taken her to the heights of the nation last year; stop thinking and start pulling. But Erickson still faltered. She wasn't timid, but she wasn't hitting either, going 1-for-5 in the first half from three point range.
Erickson knew she had a lot more riding on this game than just a victory. And that's when 20 minutes set right a 12-year career that had taken a plot twist William Faulkner would have been proud of.
Six second-half three pointers along with her lone three from the first set the Duke single-game record. She knew then that the pain might not go away, but it wouldn't slow her down anymore.
"That game was going to make or break me," she said. "I felt like I had to do it. [After the game] I knew I was back. I finally got to the top of the hill, and I know this sounds cheesy, but I had battled the beast, and I was still standing. At that point, I knew I had overcome the mental battle."
And while nobody knows for certain how the epitaph of Erickson's career will read, there's one thing she's certain of, it hasn't been written yet.
Andrea Bookman contributed to this story.
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