THE ROAD WARRIOR

Between Peru, Ind. and Durham, N.C. there's a broad swath of land as American as baseball and plastic flamingos-731 miles worth. And Doug Rice knows every one of them like the way you know your mother's name.

Mountains rising sharply like giant spires reaching for the last rays of a fading West Virginia sky, the endless sequence of toll booths, a steel staccato in the constant drone of highway.

He's seen sunrises in three states, sunsets in four and more fast food than he can remember. And it always ends in the same seat in Cameron.

It's not the life of Doug Rice, it's his love.

"When they enter college you think four years is a long time," he says. "Then a couple of years pass and you realize it's almost over with."

His voice is more grandfatherly than fatherly, comforting but not overbearing, like the difference between a pat on the back and a bear hug.

But on the court, the apple fell a full-court press away from the tree.

Playing with the reckless abandon of a Pamplona bull and with twice the energy, Lauren Rice has earned the reputation as one of the league's most emotional players. And for every scream, every dive, there's the perfect chain reaction between the two, the flailing arms on the court, the silent fist pump in the stands.

The owner of Agra Placement International, Doug has learned to shuffle his schedule like an Atlantic City card shark. When Lauren takes the floor, somehow, some way, Doug will find his way behind the bench.

"I have good people," he admits. "I'm incredibly lucky to be able to do it."

After all, he's had plenty of practice.

Four children, half a dozen sports and a million directions to be pulled in, Doug was well prepared when his youngest child became a high school superstar.

It was soccer in third grade, basketball with the boys in fourth-"the boys were so mad because she was better," the dad boasts, "they wouldn't pass it to her"-and by the time she hit high school, scheduling was a science and Doug had earned a doctorate.

"My parents always pushed me, always challenged me," Lauren says. "They were always around at the games, always supportive."

But when Lauren and Doug had to part ways when she left for college in 1996, it almost turned disastrous.

There's a story head coach Gail Goestenkors will tell you about Lauren about as quickly as if it were her last name. It comes complete with a laugh these days, but it wasn't with a smile that Lauren wore through it.

It was Champaign, Ill., Goestenkors will start, the smile already breaking out at the corners of her mouth, and somewhere beyond the pressure sealed windows of a charter plane, a sunny North Carolina March had given way to a cold, gray Illinois day.

She was a freshman then, and in the middle of a serious bout with homesickness-any bit of Indiana dirt was North Carolina gold for the displaced Hoosier. The sky was gray, the ground was gray, even the plane was gray. In the middle of it all-and this is where Goestenkors' face will crumble into a laugh-Lauren looked around, her face brighter than the fog lights on the plane, and screamed to whoever would listen, "Isn't this beautiful?"

But when there was trouble, there were her parents, on the endless stretch of I-64 or on stretching wires of a telephone connection.

"I really wanted to go home, I thought that was the right decision," the senior tri-captain says now. "I missed my family too much. But they kept saying that if you started something you need to finish it. If I gave it another year they said things would work better and they did."

When she went to Duke, the asphalt spiderweb of highways in Indiana became a 12-hour Amazon.

The years passed faster than the trips, it seemed sometimes. Twelve hours up, four hours at the game, a quick hello and a quicker good-bye. It's not perfect, but for the closely knit family, it could hardly be better.

His first Duke game was just after Thanksgiving at the Ronald McDonald Duke Basketball Classic. Cameron was almost empty, but he barely noticed.

"The environment was totally different, being on the big time now," he said. "But it was so exciting; I was so proud."

He made about a third of the games that year, he estimates, sometimes accompanied by his wife and family members, sometimes alone.

And as the next two years rolled by, Doug upped his attendance to two-thirds of the games.

But when a blur of jumpshots passed a November weekend freshman year into Lauren's last hardwood stand, he committed himself to going to all the games.

"Time goes by very quickly," he says. "I wanted to make the most of what was left."

So Doug Rice has become the basketball Bedouin, living in a mix of gas fumes and fast food wrappers.

But he could hardly be happier.

"I'm just so proud of her as always," he says, "and I know how lucky I am to be able to share this season with her."

How much of Lauren's senior season remains is hard to guess, but in bubbles and brackets and tournament seeds, the one thing that you can count on is wherever the game is, somewhere in the West Virginia mountains or the flatlands of Indiana, Doug Rice is counting down the miles, two hours at a time.