R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Last year, the women's basketball team waged a war for respect.

The Blue Devils dubbed their season "The Journey," referring to the journey from Durham to San Jose, the site of the Final Four. It was a journey of a good team trying to become an elite team.

But it was something more than that. Michele VanGorp & Co. were on a journey to gain respect. Duke was a program with little prominence and even less fan support. On a campus completely immersed in men's basketball, the Blue Devils were not seeking much, just their own little slice of the pie.

When coach Gail Goestenkors hoisted the net from the East Regional Finals above her head in late March, having just watched her team stun the nation with a 69-63 upset of Tennessee, Duke finally had the respect it worked so hard to earn.

Now, just a few months later, it's all gone.

"We've already heard so much, 'You're not going to be good next year,'" senior Lauren Rice explained. "We really take that personally. We're going to go out there trying to earn respect. It's like we're starting all over. All the respect we earned last year is gone."

Also gone are the six players who formed the heart and soul of last year's team, but those who are returning seem ready to move on. Duke has once again decided to go to war, and once again, the goal is respect.

A majority of the returning players have spent their summers in Durham to work out together in a quest to get bigger and better. They get up every morning at 7:30 to run and lift weights.

"She's told us everyone has to step up," junior forward Rochelle Parent said. "Everyone has to improve on their roles. At the banquet and in the off-season, that was one of her main focuses: No one can stay the same if we plan on being successful.

"We still have a lot of talent left and we have a lot of talent coming in. Obviously, some people are going to have to change their roles and become leaders, but overall, I think the talent is still there and the work ethic is definitely there. We're going to have to work a lot harder, but we're all ready for that and up for the challenge."

The player who can expect the largest role change is rising sophomore Krista Gingrich. Although the much-heralded point guard struggled toward the end of last season and saw little playing time during the NCAA tournament, she will be Duke's primary ball handler next year.

Gingrich is not one of the players in Durham this summer, but is working out at her home in Pennsylvania. She came down to Duke one weekend and "amazed" Rice with a new-found confidence. The Gingrich bandwagon is also joined by Goestenkors, who believes her new starting point guard will be ready for the added responsibility.

"I was very happy with her progress [last season]," the coach said. "I know toward the end she lost her confidence a little bit.... But I also know Krista is the type of person and player who loves a challenge. She understands that she has to come through for us next year. There's a lot of pressure on her and she's excited about it. I feel like she's really looking forward to the challenge."

Rising up to the challenge is the featured phrase for the Blue Devils this off-season.

"The key to next year is all of us stepping up," Rice said. "The group coming back are some of our hardest workers. We didn't get the honors that the seniors did, but we would be in at the end of the game defensively to get the rebound or to make the key plays that don't show up in awards or stats."

But ultimately, Duke's returnees are going to have to show up in the stats sheets more than they did last year. The Blue Devils lose four of their top six scorers as well as their top two ball distributors. In addition, whenever the Blue Devils needed a basket last season, they turned to VanGorp or Erickson. This year, the person to emerge as the go-to player remains somewhat of a mystery.

"I think it's going to be very interesting," Goestenkors said. "If we're going to be successful I think it's going to be because everyone contributes. I don't see any one player as the star or the go-to-player necessarily. I think in different situations, we're going to be able to go to different people. On any given night, I think we're going to have different people step up."

But if any one player on this team is to emerge as the star, it will likely be sharp-shooting Georgia Schweitzer. The rising junior made quite a name for herself en route to winning the East Regional MVP award. Despite nagging injuries, she averaged 10 points a game last year, and in tournament games against Old Dominion and Tennessee, she scored 15 and 22 points, respectively.

But most observers seem to feel that Schweitzer and her fellow Blue Devils will not have the same mettle as last season's leaders.

"We're going to be the underdogs, but that's a role this team likes to play," Rice said. "No matter what people say, we are not going to settle."

But Duke now finds itself in an awkward stage where it is trying to earn respect and cement its status as an elite basketball program, yet at the same time, it must undergo a fairly substantial rebuilding process.

Where will this journey lead? Only time will tell, and for the Blue Devils, that's the fun part.

"Last year before the season we were more anxious, but this year, it's not anxiety, it's more excitement because we don't really know what's ahead," Parent said. "It's going to be an entirely different team and we're all going to be different players next year, so I think we're all excited for the upcoming season. We want to see what it's going to be like, because I think a lot of people are going to underestimate us and that just excites us."