Just seven months after splashing onto the national scene with their monumental upset of Tennessee in the East Regional Finals, Gail Goestenkors and the women's basketball program will look to score an equally monumental recruiting coup this weekend.
Four top-notch recruits, all of whom rank among the top three at their position in the country, visit Duke this weekend in what is shaping up to be the most important recruiting weekend in the history of the program.
Alana Beard, Anne O'Neil, Nicole Powell and Iciss Tillis all decided to take their official campus visits this weekend, creating an exciting and hectic situation for Goestenkors, who only has three scholarships left for next year's incoming class.
"We thought this was our most important recruiting class for us, and we had a great recruiting class last year," Goestenkors said. "So it would be really nice to have back-to-back great classes; we feel like it could put us right back where we want to be."
The great recruiting class this season began with the commitments of Vicki Krapohl, Crystal White and Rometra Craig, and it could be capped by Beard, one of the most athletic players ever pursued by Goestenkors.
A 5-foot-11 forward from Fearson, La., Beard is rated as the No. 1 wing in the country by Mike White's All Star Girls Report. In her first three years at Southwood High School in Shreveport, Beard has led her school to three straight state 5A championships, averaging 25.9 points, 9.4 rebounds and 4.2 steals in her junior season.
After visiting Kentucky and Arkansas earlier, Beard attended Purdue's "Mackey Magic" midnight practice last weekend and plans a November visit to Louisiana Tech. Beard, however, hasn't
"I'll just let God direct me and what He thinks will be best for me," Beard said. "When I feel it, I'll know."
While Beard looks to a higher power for aid in choosing her college, her AAU teammate and friend Tillis found a slightly different source-a poster given to her by the mother of a former teammate.
Vicki Stone, who works in the University Development Office at Duke, sent Tillis a Blue Devils poster two years ago, and it quickly found a home.
"I was thinking, 'Hey this is a cool poster, I'm going to hang it up in my room.'" Tillis said. "So that's when I first got interested in Duke."
If the Tulsa, Okla. native continues her brilliant play, she may find herself on posters before too long. Rated the No. 3 forward by ASGR and No. 1 overall by one national recruiting publication, the 6-3 Tillis can play inside, shoot from outside and has thrown down a pair of dunks during an Olympic training session.
Unlike the other three recruits who are still in the midst of their cross-country tours, O'Neil makes her final official visit this weekend.
The versatile 5-11 scoring machine from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is on pace to break the all-time Iowa record for scoring. An intense student of the game, O'Neil holds her own in the classroom as well, carrying a 4.1 GPA.
"Her work ethic [is incredible]," said Dennis Roloff, O'Neil's coach at Kennedy High School. "We have two hours practices and she spends another two hours of shooting. It's not like she just takes the time given to her, she extends it.
"I think Anne is the best that I've seen come through Iowa."
While O'Neil may be the jack-of-all-trades on the basketball court, she still has a long ways to go before matching Powell in terms of versatility.
In addition to basketball, Powell is also Mountain Pointe High School's No. 1 badminton player, Arizona's state runner-up in doubles tennis and stars for the cross-country and track teams.
For her all-around athletic prowess and a 4.0 GPA in the classroom, Powell was named The Arizona Republic's student-athlete of the year in 1998-99 and the newspaper's high school player of the century.
Being from the West, however, Powell didn't latch on to Duke until it staged its Cinderella run last March.
"They got a lot of publicity last year," Powell said. "You didn't usually hear about Duke and women's basketball before that. That's how I first thought about them."
Powell has narrowed her list down to four schools rich in academics and basketball tradition: Stanford, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and Duke. During this weekend's visit, Powell hopes to learn a bit more about the basketball program's ingredients.
"I would say the thing I'm looking for the most is the team and the chemistry-the personalities of the team and how team interacts," Powell said. "How I fit in with the rest of the student-athletes is important."
All four recruits are expected to arrive in Durham by Friday and attend the Blue-White men's scrimmage Saturday evening. But even if none of the four commits to Duke, just the fact that they are here is a positive sign to Goestenkors.
"Early on, we would try to sell the Duke academics; that's really all we had to sell," the coach said. "Now, because we've been so successful over the past several years, we feel like we can offer the best of both, the academics and the basketball."
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