RICHMOND, Va. - When the question was asked before last season's NCAA tournament, she paused for a second, leaning back against the stiff wooden chair as a smile crept across her face like a stream swelling over its banks.
And then she laughed.
She had been asked if it was impossible-impossible of all words to ask Lauren Rice-she had been asked if it was impossible to win the NCAA tournament.
Impossible is to Lauren Rice what the theory of relativity is to most people-it exists, but don't expect her to waste too much time thinking about it.
This season, she wasn't the best player on the team-she had rarely been the best player on any of her teams-and she wasn't even the best senior, but she had been named captain and, like Atlas, the weight of the team rested on her shoulders.
When the year started, impossible was as much a part of preseason predictions as Goestenkors' match-up zones.
From the bleary-eyed freshman who wanted more than anything not to be at Duke to the bleary-eyed senior who didn't want to be anywhere else, Rice hadn't just been instrumental to Duke-she had been Duke.
"I didn't know where I'd get leadership from when this season started," Goestenkors said. "And Lauren gave it to us."
Peppi Browne and Georgia Schweitzer joined her as captains, but Goestenkors knew when the season started, it was Rice who had to make this team tough.
When Browne went down, it was Rice's attitude the team adopted to turn a season lost into a championship season.
She was simply covergirl for the impossible-the photo of her with her arms upraised, challenging three-time national champions and anyone else that would come after the Blue Devils' win over Tennessee-made it even more tangible.
When Duke won its first ACC championship after the media picked it to finish fourth, it simply became reality.
And for the full 36 minutes she played against LSU, she almost conquered the impossible again.
"She played like a warrior today," Goestenkors said afterwards. "That's the kind of attitude we needed."
But even the attitude wasn't enough, and when she banged home a long three-pointer for the last Duke bucket of the season, it was clear that she had won the battle, but it was long after the war had ended.
There wasn't much disappointment after the game-the loss had hurt, of course, but it already felt like the summer, when every coach becomes the hypothetical ruler of a mythical world, when that one blue chip recruit becomes a daydream superstar.
But there is no tomorrow in Duke blue for Lauren Rice, and when she dropped her No. 40 in a crumpled heap in the middle of a locker room half a country away from her home of Peru, Ind., all that came was the end.
Sometimes, the impossible stays that way.
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