SAN JOSE, Calif. - Three years ago, Nicole Erickson and Michele VanGorp thought life at Purdue couldn't have been better. The then-sophomores had helped the Boilermakers to an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAAs and looked forward to a couple of more championship runs with Purdue.
Then Purdue dismissed head coach Lin Dunn, who recruited Erickson and VanGorp, in a much-publicized contract dispute. Just as quickly as Erickson and VanGorp had begun enjoying Purdue, their hearts were torn, wrangled and a once-promising future suddenly looked in disarray.
Last night, the Boilermakers turned the trick again, sending Erickson, VanGorp and the Blue Devils home broken-hearted and empty handed.
Erickson never found the stroke that had sank the dagger into Georgia just two days earlier, and VanGorp, although she led the team in scoring with 15 points, could never establish herself as an inside presence.
Their struggles came on a night that had all the sub-plots and histrionics of any Oscar-winning film. They had a chance to lead their team to the program's first-ever national championship against a team they had left just three years ago.
At that time, VanGorp and Erickson looked elsewhere to continue their collegiate careers. Hinging their decision on trust, they found Duke and Gail Goestenkors, who had been an assistant under Dunn for six years at Purdue.
After sitting out their first season at Duke two years ago, the transfers began paying dividends and elevating Duke's program among the nation's elite. This season, they realized their long-held dreams of playing for the national championship, only at a different place than they had originally imagined.
"It is amazing that all of us have been to the Final Four," said Erickson of her former Purdue teammates, VanGorp and Summer Erb, who transferred to N.C. State and helped the Wolfpack to the Final Four last season after Dunn's dismissal. "We all had that as an aspiration."
Dunn's firing triggered a mass exodus of players out of Purdue, including VanGorp, Erickson and Erb, the ACC player of the year. In fact, when Nell Fortner took over the Boilermakers following Dunn, four players had transferred in all, and two recruits had been released from their letters of intent.
But the two instrumental players who decided to stay were then-freshmen Stephanie White-McCarty and Ukari Figgs, who form arguably the best backcourt in the country.
The pair then had to endure another coaching change when Fortner left to work with USA basketball and Carolyn Peck took the reins of the program. Ironically, Peck will leave after this season to take a head-coach and GM position with the Orlando expansion team in the WNBA.
"When I recruited them, it was with the idea that they would play for a national championship before they graduated," Dunn said earlier of Figgs, White-McCarty, VanGorp and Erickson. "I told them the idea, and it happened-just in a different way. I just hope all of them win."
And White-McCarty and Figgs did all they could to lift their team to victory. During a sloppily-played first-half, White-McCarty provided nearly all of the offensive fireworks for Purdue, scoring on several drives.
When White-McCarty struggled to find the basket in the second half, Figgs picked up right where she left off. The lightning-quick guard broke down her defender off the dribble on the first two plays of the second half, scoring two straight baskets to cut Duke's five point half-time lead to one and turning the momentum of the game.
"Steph and I have been through so much together and we dreamed about it," Figgs said. "We talked about winning the national championship and that is why we stayed [at Purdue]."
As the game wound down, Figgs continued to provide the spark with White-McCarty sitting on the bench nursing an injury. Her strip of Erickson with 2:50 left, that drew the fifth foul of the night on Erickson, sealed the game for the Boilermakers and lifted Purdue to its first national championship, while Dunn looked on through tear-soaked eyes.
On one night, four of her former players competed for the national championship, and two of them walked away champions.
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