Senior Howard closes career with near dream

When the game ended, she knew it was over. But even as she looked up at the zeroes on the scoreboard, she couldn't quite believe it.

120 minutes after everybody thought her career would be over and 80 minutes after everybody knew it would be, it finally was. Three straight upsets had lifted Duke to its first national title game in program history, and all she wanted was just five more minutes.

As the last echoes of the buzzer melted into the rafters in San Jose, sped along by the Purdue cheers, the tears that found their way to Hilary Howard's face weren't the ones that she had planned on shedding a day ago.

In 24 hours, the dream season had found a 20-minute coda of a nightmare.

The loss was hard to deal with, but the performance was downright painful. A season-low point total and 32.7 percent shooting effort was not the way Duke's floor general wanted her team to go out.

"Absolute frustration," she said of the team's 62-45 loss. "We hadn't played as well as we could have. There were a lot of tears in the locker room. Right after the game we were not looking at the season as whole; we all felt like we just let a national championship slip through our hands."

But for the second-year captain, known to Duke fans as simply "Hibby," for the player who in the 1998 team media guide said she didn't couldn't imagine going a day without smiling, it only took a trip back home to Durham to put the season in perspective.

When she stepped off the plane and when she later stepped onto the stage to address the welcome-back crowd gathered in Cameron Indoor Stadium on Tuesday, she understood one thing very clearly: the journey of a season had been the journey of a lifetime.

"What we felt was urgency," she said. "If we lost we would've dropped from polls. We were relieved to come out and play well. For me personally I was frustrated because I would find myself not able to do simple things like I used to do, just making a cut or something.

"I got down on myself. At times I was nervous that I was never going to be even 80 percent."

But the team caught fire and Howard rolled with them. In a three-month blur, the formerly 1-3 Blue Devils ripped off 20 wins in 21 games, losing only to defending national champions Tennessee in early December.

At the forefront was the team-leader Howard.

She picked up 11 assists and 10 points to record her only career double-double against then-No. 9 UCLA in Los Angeles. And at home against Georgia Tech, she put her name atop the all-time assist list at Duke University, passing former teammate Kira Orr.

"On a personal level it is my highlight," she said. "It's something special because since I've been young I've always wanted to pass, not shoot. They're have been so many great guards here at Duke, it's really something to be proud of."

Then there were the two regular season games she'll never forget. As a freshman, Howard had given the ACC a grand welcome, sinking a last minute jumper to shock arch-rival North Carolina 86-85 in 1996. She wanted her goodbye to be even more special.

Playing before a sellout crowd of 11,000 in Carmichael Auditorium, the Blue Devils ripped the Tar Heels by 22 points, two days after Howard's 22nd birthday. A month later on Senior Day in Cameron, Duke held a repeat performance, sweeping UNC in the regular season for just the third time in school history.

"The two Carolina games were unbelievable," Howard said. "The atmosphere in Carmichael, and our Senior Day... it was the perfect ending to the regular season."

Then the second season began.

Again the team stumbled out of the gates, falling in the ACC semi-finals to Clemson, the only team to beat Duke all season in conference play.

But Howard got tough. She traded in Hibby for Little Chief and the general became the warrior. The Blue Devils had to stare down three-time defending national champion Tennessee for the right to return to San Jose, but for Howard the season was about gaining the Final Four berth she felt they should have had last year, regardless of who stood in the way.

And when Duke shocked everybody's consensus pick in the Elite Eight, even the ever-confident Howard was a little awe-struck by what was about to happen.

"It's hard to explain how unbelievable that feeling was," she said. "It was like two dreams came true in one, making the Final Four and beating Tennessee. I'll always remember celebrating, and [senior Takisha Jones] and I were crying. We knew we might only have had 40 minutes left."

A week removed from the title game, she now knows fully that her Duke career is over. Now, she just sometimes can't believe it all happened.

"My senior year has been tremendous," she said. "If I had to go back and rewind five years, in a heart beat I'd pick Duke, with the people I was involved with. It's hasn't all sunk in yet; it's a blur. Sometimes I'm still surprised we played for it all.

"I'll always remember playing for the national title, but I'll remember playing on this team more."