Goestenkors reflects on year that shook heads

When the call came, Gail Goestenkors sat quietly in her Cameron office and listened patiently to the voice, coming through at a salesman's pitch. On the other end was a representative for the WNBA's expansion Orlando Miracle, which would join the league nearly a year to the day of that May afternoon.

The team needed a general manager/coach, and for Goestenkors, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. But when she hung up the phone on that Wednesday afternoon, she knew it was an opportunity she was going to turn down, because there was another opportunity to be pursued, one that was maybe even more rare than once in a lifetime.

In six years, the former assistant to Lin Dunn at Purdue had taken a Duke program that finished 4-12 in the ACC in 1992 to its first-ever regular season title in '98. That season, she had taken Duke to within one game of the Final Four. For Goestenkors, it meant she had something left to do.

"I took my name out [of the running] because I knew Duke is really where I wanted to be and that we still have a lot of unfinished business here," Goestenkors said when she announced her decision to stay. "I still think we have a lot that we need to accomplish. I think this is where I belong."

But it was more than just the Final Four. This team was special. When she became head coach here she said she knew she could take Duke to the national title if she could only get the "right people."

With six seniors, five starters returning and two transfers, this was a team that Goestenkors had proudly carried through the wars of college basketball. They had suffered together; they had celebrated together. These were the right people, this was the right season. It all just came together.

The two transfers, Michele VanGorp and Nicole Erickson, were carryovers from her Purdue days and the close friendship she had with the legendary Dunn, who had three years ago left Purdue on unpleasant terms.

Hilary Howard was the heart of the team, an extension of the tough-minded Coach G. There was Payton Black, whose phenomenal freshman campaign started the four-year run that was about to come to a close.

When the time came for this team to make the push for the Final Four, Goestenkors wanted to make sure of one thing: it was going to be ready for it.

But as the season started, it was clear her team wasn't ready for the regular season, much less the Final Four push. A rash of injuries plagued nearly every major contributor on the team and only a handful were in game shape during a humiliating 30-point loss on national television to Connecticut.

The losses kept coming-a shocker to Virginia Tech at home, a blowout at Notre Dame. The team was 1-3, on the verge of falling out of the polls and the Goestenkors wisdom of scheduling all-comers gained a bandwagon full of naysayers.

"It was tough," she recalled. "If we hadn't had the great leadership we had, it could have gone a different route. Because of the leadership of the players, we always felt like we were going to be okay if we got healthy."

Then, frustration and the urgency of a senior-laden team made its own basketball bomb. Duke exploded. They stunned Vanderbilt at home, swept through the Duke Classic and rifled through the ACC opener against Florida State.

And even in the loss to defending champion Tennessee, there was victory. Three months later, the game that Goestenkors had scheduled almost as an afterthought proved to be the most important game of the season.

"We would have never won the second game if it wasn't for the first," Howard said. "The first time we played a little intimidated; the second time we knew we would win."

The team slipped to No. 19 in the polls from the preseason No. 5, but Goestenkors believed in her team. She knew they would pull through; it was just a matter of time.

She was rewarded quickly.

The Duke momentum never died. Eight of nine became 15 of 16 became 11 in a row became 13-0 in the ACC. The Blue Devils rolled. The polls were slow in responding, but Goestenkors knew she had her team right where she wanted it. The toughest schedule in program history had yielded a few more losses than she would have liked, but she couldn't have asked for a more confident team.

"When we outscored [Tennessee] in the second half, we knew we could compete," she said, "and that's when we got it going."

The Blue Devils steamrolled through the regular season and Goestenkors picked up her third ACC Coach of the Year honor. But after a tough loss at Clemson near the end of the season, Duke stumbled in the ACC tournament, losing again to the Tigers.

They just weren't tough, she thought, so Goestenkors set out to solve the problems. For two weeks, there wasn't one foul called in practice. Every day the team battled the male practice squad, and every day, they played hard or they paid for it.

They became a team of warriors, and again Goestenkors had her team where she wanted it.

"We peaked at the right time," she said. "We were playing the best basketball of anybody in the [NCAA]. I'm real proud of the team because we did peak at the right time."

The peak of the peak was a Rocky Top-the Tennessee rematch. Goestenkors talked up the defending champs to the media, but when she went into the locker room before the game, she knew her team could win.

More important than knowing they could win, she made them believe they could.

"The key to the entire night was the fact that the players believed," she said. "It doesn't matter what gameplan you have if the players really don't believe."

After the team beat Georgia in the national semifinals, a strangely calm game sandwiched between a pair of emotional contests, Goestenkors felt something she hadn't in a long time against Purdue-disappointment. It wasn't directed at the team or at herself, but at the timing. It was one of the worst games the Blue Devils played all season during the most important one in school history.

But when she returned home after the defeat to Carolyn Peck, who filled the job Goestenkors turned down in Orlando, she called the season better than anyone else has or had.

"When we went out to San Jose and lost to Connecticut by 30 to start the season, there were a lot of people shaking their heads, and when we beat Tennessee to make it back to San Jose," she said, pausing for a moment to smile, "there were a whole lot of people still shaking their heads."

Nick Tylwalk and Victor Zhao contributed to this story