Senior Day not the same without Browne in Duke lineup

I don't know that there's any place in the world as lonely as a deserted gym.

I suppose I'm confronted with it more than most people-it's an occupational hazard for a sportswriter-but there's something so incredibly lonesome about thousands of seats, silently upright around a deserted court.

Emptiness hangs thick in the air like a spilled Coke and all the life of the building scampers into the darkened shadows above, scurrying like an animal up a tree to avoid being forgotten on the court.

But Cameron is funny that way. Maybe it's the amount of time I spend there, but the old barn never seems empty. It has a distinct hum all its own, a soft murmur of a million people past. The old timers might tell you it's Vic Bubas, still giving hell to a referee or maybe it's the whizz of a 45-foot heave finding the bottom of the net from Jeff Capel's hand time and time again.

And only once do I ever remember that building being quiet.

That was the night that Peppi Browne went from the present to the past.

Every athlete lives on a schedule-a day of work is a day closer to the end. They mark their lives and ours not like stars, reliably sitting in the sky when we need them for guidance, but like comets shooting through the night sky, leaving us with a handful of memories about days when it all went right.

But the problem of comets is that once they fly past, you might never see them again.

Then came the look of horror on her face, as every muscle in her face looked like it was pulled taught like a violin string. She looked directly at the bench, her mouth frozen in a jagged "O" and her body paralyzed by surprise. In one drawn-out moment, as all of the sound left Cameron as though God himself had sucked it out with a vacuum cleaner, Peppi was trapped in an awkward squatting position, suspended maybe entirely by the disbelief that a career had just ended.

Then she crumbled.

And even old Bubas himself quieted down.

She lay on the ground rolling in labored motions, like a sluggish river sizing up its banks. A swarm of trainers and coaches dashed to her, but there was nothing they could do, nothing they would be able to do.

It was a torn ACL, they'd find out, and in three-letter simplicity, it meant that the books had been closed on No. 10.

Athletes are prepared for these kind of things, but even the best prepared would hardly have expected Peppi Browne, who had been through the wars of college basketball and always departed the field head-high, to be lying on the ground like an upturned beetle.

She tried to come back.

Four days later I spoke to her after practice, a sizable brace her badge of dedication on her knee, and with hair out of place and still out of breath, she said she'd be back. If her body would let her, she'd push it as hard as she could.

But pushing against the weight of the inevitable never gets you much of anywhere, and Peppi Browne's body simply gave in. With no fanfare and just a resigned shake of her head, her Duke career has come to an end.

The tragedy isn't so much the injury itself-there are a lot more important things than knees, Peppi will tell you-it was that Peppi never got to say goodbye to the game on her terms.

When I played my last tennis match as a high school senior-a 5-4 loss in the state semifinals-I sat and watched a bright late spring sun fade to a dull orange, clutching my sweat-soaked high school tennis shirt for my life.

I didn't want to give it up. You forget, almost, that life outside the lines is where the game's won and lost. I don't know that I've realized that yet, but I at least got to say good-bye on my terms.

Somewhere, in the fading sun of a North Carolina spring day I drew new lines to play in.

And last year, when Trajan Langdon literally floated out of the arena like a golden leaf on an autumn wind's worth of "Go to hell, Carolina," chants, he got to say good-bye as a senior the way it should be done.

That's a chance Peppi won't get.

I guess that's the way it works, though. Sometimes Mary Decker Slaney tumbles, sometimes Dan Jansen crashes into the opening turn. Sometimes even Muhammad Ali himself can't deliver the knockout punch.

It's been tough to watch her sitting on the bench in street clothes, mindlessly mashing her fingers together like they were clay.

And it's going to be hard to watch her at senior night tomorrow night, as one of the program's most important players says good-bye to a half-empty arena with a half-sincere smile.

I learned a while ago that a guy with a day-old shave and a two-day old headache isn't going to make much difference, but while Peppi can't say good-bye to the game the way she should be able, Duke University should say good-bye in the way she deserves.

Maybe people will show up to give her the credit she deserves, maybe they won't, but if there's any consolation to it, she simply couldn't have done it any better in the time she had.

I'll be in Cameron Thursday night, sitting in the same place I've always sat, with the same group of friends I've been sitting with since my Gilbert-Addoms days. I'll probably stand and clap when Peppi walks out, the slight limp like an invisible chain tugging on her leg. Hell, I'll probably even break out a smile, but when she stands out there accepting flowers graciously, smiling and waving to the crowd, I'll have a hard time believing that Cameron-even if 9,314 show up-is anything but empty.

UPON FURTHER REVIEW is a weekly column written by a sports columnist. It appears every Wednesday.