When their heads stop spinning and their feet touch the ground again, the Duke Blue Devils might let you know how they feel. But for now, with the school's first Final Four appearance on the immediate horizon, coach Gail Goestenkors is just letting them enjoy the journey-for a day at least.
"We're still overjoyed," Goestenkors said. "I'm just so proud of this team.... We had a wonderful bus ride home; there was lots of singing, lots of dancing, but today we get back to business.
"[The reaction] has been wonderful. I've probably got six bouquets of flowers in my office."
And no one, much less the coach who turned a middle-of-the-pack ACC team with one career NCAA tournament appearance into a Final Four club in eight seasons, has yet to forget how the Blue Devils punched their ticket to San Jose, Calif. Facing three-time defending national champion Tennessee, the Blue Devils-the region's No. 3 seed-ended the No. 1 Volunteers' 21-game tournament win streak, 69-63.
But according to Goestenkors, all the credit lies with the players themselves.
"I thought we had an excellent gameplan against Tennessee," she said. "But the key to the entire night was the fact that the players believed. It doesn't matter what game plan you have if the players really don't believe they can beat Tennessee, and they did. They carried out the game plan and played with so much heart the coach couldn't ask for anything more."
In a game where the unexpected was the norm, it was perhaps only fitting that its hero was sophomore Georgia Schweitzer. Schweitzer, whose season has rolled up and down with the tides of injury, played through pain the entire game. And for Goestenkors, her team-high 22-point effort was nearly as important as the win itself.
"I'm so proud of Georgia," Goestenkors said. "Her shoulder has popped out several times during the [NCAA Tournament]; she is the toughest kid on our team. Our team doctor said no other athlete, male or female, would be playing with her injury, period. That says a lot about her. [Against Tennessee] she just said, 'This is for all the marbles, you can't afford to let an injury stand in the way.'"
With the East Region title, the women's team joins the men's team in the Final Four, the first time the feat has been accomplished since Georgia in 1983.
And while the success of the women's team has increased the national attention on Duke basketball, it also brought Goestenkors a special visit from someone who's seen his share of Final Fours.
"Mike Krzyzewski came by this morning and we talked a little bit," she said. "He watched the game last night, and to see the joy on his face, it was very genuine. He was just so happy for us, and I knew he would be, but it was nice to see.... He said, 'You should take at least this morning and this afternoon to enjoy this, this is such a huge win for your program, you really need to appreciate this, then begin looking forward to the next game, but you need to enjoy this moment.'"
The Blue Devils remember how not too long ago it was tough to enjoy much about basketball. After racing through the season with a 19-game win streak and a 15-1 ACC mark, Duke, who Goestenkors then labeled as "not mentally tough," closed out the season by losing twice to Clemson in its final four games, including once in the ACC semifinals.
Goestenkors told her players then that they had to play like warriors unless it wanted the offseason to arrive a few weeks early. The Blue Devils, after two weeks of practice without foul calls, took the message to heart.
But at the same time they've managed to have their fun with it.
"They each have a warrior name," Goestenkors said. "They call me Big Chief G; Hilary Howard's Little Chief. They've taken pride in their names, it's something we've joked about and made fun of, at the same time, they know there's some seriousness about it. Peppi's Crazyhorse, Nicole's Bullseye. Georgia is Sky Rocket, Michele is Lanemaster. Rochelle is Boardmaster. Naz is Stubborn Bull."
And maybe, just maybe, Goestenkors hopes, the nicknames will remind her Blue Devils that in the wild, wild Final Four, ambush always lurks around the corner.
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