RICHMOND, Va. - In an office as littered with boxes as her wall is with awards, Gail Goestenkors admitted all the way back in October that her team would take her only as far as she could take them.
"Last year, I sat back and watched," she said then. "Now I've got to coach."
And she has done that, leaping over expectations like foot-high hurdles.
But when the chips fell down against Louisiana State in the Sweet 16, even Goestenkors finally missed a call.
She wasn't outcoached-she was out personelled.
In a moment of perfect insight, senior Lauren Rice hit it right on the head-"LSU played the game we wanted to play."
Switching defenses and shuffling players even faster than her pronounced Lew-siana drawl, Sue Gunter, who advanced to her second Elite Eight in 32 years, had every right move for every situation.
And Gail Goestenkors was left without an option.
"We played young," she said. "I hate to use youth as an excuse, but I thought we were affected."
Even sophomore Krista Gingrich, who had become arguably Duke's most important player down the stretch, simply didn't show up in the Blue Devils' loss.
The stat line didn't tell it all, but it said enough: 0-for-4 from the floor, 0 points.
"It was almost like a freshman game for her," Goestenkors said.
Sheana Mosch, fresh off a 25-point statement game against Western Kentucky in the second round, scored a quiet eight points with a single assist.
The rest of the cast that had turned Duke from a rebuilding squad to a championship contender saw their season end before they made an impact in the biggest game of their lives.
But for the first 27 minutes, before an 18-4 run in the second half made the rest of the game as predictable as a B-grade movie, the Blue Devils almost managed to patch up a sinking ship long enough to make it to a third straight Elite Eight.
Working against primarily a 1-3-1 zone from the Tigers, the Blue Devils were able to control the offensive glass for the game's opening half. Duke's ultra-quick junior forward Rochelle Parent had little problem finding LSU center DeTrina White at the back of the zone and driving her out of the paint.
And against a well-spaced Duke offense, that left the Tigers only one player in close enough position to fight for the defensive rebound.
So while the Blue Devils offense sputtered at a 35-percent shooting clip, Parent was able to control the boards, picking up four offensive rebounds in the first half alone.
Duke won the rebounding battle 12-3 on the offensive end.
Duke won the first half 31-30.
But as Goestenkors found out, even the best magician can't pull quarters from behind ears forever, and in the second half, what Duke didn't have proved to be the difference.
As LSU's defenses shuffled, Duke's offense failed to slip into its usual rhythm, and the poor first half shooting percentage became even worse.
When LSU switched from its mix of 1-3-1 and 2-3 defenses to a tight man-to-man defense, it was the final blow Duke couldn't handle.
The Tigers' man defense negated Duke's advantage on its offensive end, forcing a rushed attack into a string of one-and-out opportunities.
With little room to operate in, the Duke system never got going.
"Duke is such a great spot-up shooting team that you just can't let them take open shots," Gunter said. "They're going to knock it down."
When the run started, Goestenkors had no options to stop it.
Two months ago, it would've been Peppi Browne who stepped up in the interior, denying the three straight open looks inside that pushed the score from a 47-42 Duke advantage with 12:56 to play to a 48-47 deficit Duke wouldn't recover from just a minute later.
And it likely would've been Browne who picked up a rebound from that same 12:56 mark until 7:44 left to play, which would be the next time Duke picked up a board on either end of the floor.
Or it might have been Michele Matyasovsky or any other hero of the night that Goestenkors had pulled from her bag during the season.
But Browne, who tore her ACL in January, remained injured and the rest of the lot were exactly what they were-freshmen.
Even when Goestenkors pulled out her last trump card-ACC player of the year Georgia Schweitzer-Gunter had an answer for her.
A second half switch that put Angelia Crockett on Schweitzer kept the Duke junior without a field goal after the 16:06 mark in the second half.
But, as Goestenkors knows, the great thing about youth is that there's always next year.
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