GREENSBORO - From the very first day of the 1998-99 season, Duke women's basketball coach Gail Goestenkors insisted her team's ultimate goal was winning a national championship. The players, too, felt they could play with any team in the country.
Not everyone agreed. With Tennessee aiming for its fourth consecutive title and armed with the best player in the land, many observers wondered, could the Blue Devils really beat the Lady Vols?
Wonder no more.
Despite shooting 6-of-25 from the floor in the second half, Duke never trailed after halftime and claimed the East Regional title with a 69-63 victory last night at the Greensboro Coliseum.
Duke (28-6) shot 60 percent from the floor in the first half to stake a 35-24 lead. But Tennessee (31-3) stormed out of the gates to start the second, embarking on a 10-3 run that featured baskets by all of the "Three Meeks"-Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings and Semeka Randall.
A three-pointer by Georgia Schweitzer halted the run, but the Lady Vols scored the next five points to cut the lead to 41-39 with 13:11 remaining.
Tennessee got within a single point three times over the next seven minutes, the last time coming when a 12-foot jumper by Holdsclaw made it 48-47. Duke made just one field goal during that span-and saw leading scorer Michele VanGorp pick up her fourth foul-but never surrendered the lead.
"I knew I never wanted them to have the lead, because I thought the crowd would go crazy and it would give them more confidence," Goestenkors said. "Every time they came close, we made the tough play, got the rebound, did something we needed to do."
Schweitzer and Nicole Erickson carried the Duke offense down the stretch, scoring 13 of the team's last 19 points. Down by as many as nine and forced to foul, the storied careers of Lady Vols' seniors Holdsclaw and Jolly came to an end when both fouled out in the last minute.
Holdsclaw suffered one of her poorest scoring nights ever, tying her season low with eight points on 2-of-18 shooting. Duke held the four-time All-America to 12 points when the two teams met in December, but got even better results yesterday by using a variety of schemes and defenders.
And Holdsclaw wasn't the only player in orange to have trouble finding the net. Catchings managed 13 points but hit just five of her 14 attempts, and Tennessee shot 37.7 percent as a team from the floor.
"They did a better job on Chamique and Tamika for the most part," said Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, whose last loss in the NCAA tournament was in 1995. "They put their quickest and most athletic players on them, made it a lot harder for them to get the ball."
Compounding the Lady Vols' woes was their inability to convert from the foul line. After going just 2-for-9 Saturday against Virginia Tech, Tennessee followed up with an 8-for-18 night yesterday.
"We had some opportunities," Summitt said. "We went to the free throw line and we came up short too many times. That really took something out of us."
Randall was one of the few Lady Vols to find her shot, leading her team with 18 points on 8-of-17 shooting. Jolly finished with 11 points, and Holdsclaw topped all players by grabbing 11 boards.
Schweitzer tied her career best with a game-high 22 points. Erickson and VanGorp also went for double digits, and the Blue Devils won the battle on the boards, 42-39.
Duke also committed just four second-half turnovers, a key to avoiding the transition baskets that symbolize Tennessee's uptempo attack.
"Our focus was definitely to take care of the ball," Duke's Peppi Browne said. "We actually ran some plays so we wouldn't have to dribble so much-I think we were dribbling a lot in the first half. We just got the ball inbounds, pass, pass, pass to get the ball down the floor."
As the Blue Devils' journey goes full circle to San Jose-where Duke's season began in November-women's basketball fans face the almost surreal occasion of a Final Four without Tennesee. Though some are already calling yesterday's game the most stunning upset in NCAA tournament history, one group of people who aren't shocked are the players and coaches who pulled it off.
"We honestly believed if we stuck to the game plan and we played as well as we could, we were going to win," Goestenkors said. "I guess when you expect to win, you don't feel like it's an upset when you do [win]. I truly don't believe any of our players thought it was an upset, which was probably the mentality we had to have to win the game."
Notes: Schweitzer was named the region's most outstanding player, joining VanGorp, Erickson, Catchings and Holdsclaw on the All-Region team.... No. 2 Tennessee was the highest-ranked team ever defeated by a Duke team.... With Duke's men's team advancing to the Final Four Sunday, Duke becomes the second school to send both men's and women's teams in the same year. Georgia performed the feat in 1983.... Fans interested in attending the Final Four should call 1-800-672-BLUE starting this morning at 10. Tickets are $90.
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