GREENSBORO - Behind a neatly arranged table, perched impossibly high on a shaky wooden stage sat the heroine, as arrogant in defeat as in victory and as full of swagger in a half-empty press room as in a buzzing coliseum.
Her coach sat beside her, a fitting symbol of the flashy Tar Heels, dressed in a glittering gold suit coat just as likely borrowed from Wayne Newton's Las Vegas closet as bought.
She made her thoughts known-"I knew they would throw a lot of people at me," she said, "but from the look of the stat sheets, it looks like it didn't matter who they threw at me."-and she wore her emotions as plain as the North Carolina lettering on her chest.
Nikki Teasley was holding court.
And after one of the finest performances in ACC history, nobody in the press room, just like nobody on the court, could even consider stopping her.
There are a lot of things that can be disliked about Teasley, but last night there wasn't anything-gaudy swagger and in-your-face attitude included-that couldn't be respected.
"She put on a show," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "There
Thirty-one points said most of it, a school-record seven three-pointers says more, and whatever was left unsaid she was sure to point out, but in the middle of it all there was a supremely gifted athlete with one objective and one objective only-win.
When the Tar Heels needed a bucket, the ball went to Teasley.
When the Tar Heels needed a leader, all faces turned to Teasley.
And when the Tar Heels needed a miracle, without doubt, without hesitation and with absolutely no question, the call went to Teasley.
And it was almost anticlimactic that the heroine couldn't answer.
There were more moves than in a good month for Century 21-the between the legs dribble cutting into the lane, a little shimmy after a three-pointer ripped through the net-and there were half a dozen Blue Devils showing up on the unhappy end of highlight reels.
But in the end even the slashing Super Woman of the ACC misfired.
With just under a minute to go and down by one, Teasley unleashed a long three-pointer over resident Duke hero Missy West, and 8000 sets of eyes immediately shifted to the bottom of the net, the only place the shot-no matter how outlandish-had any chance of going.
But it clanged off the rim, and the arena fell nearly silent for a brief moment, all 10 players watching stupefied as the ball harmlessly caromed off the rim and bounced twice, slowly heading out of bounds.
And the disbelief on unmoving LaShonda Allen's face as the ball bounced off the chair she was sitting in said it all-it wasn't supposed to happen this way.
Teasley got one more shot, another three as the Heels trailed by two with just under 30 seconds to play, but there would be no happy ending for the heroine.
"I was playing for the win," she said. "That's what I think of: win, not tie, not lose."
She had rescued her team from a 1-6 January swoon to turn them into an NCAA team, leapt small buildings and probably done just about every other improbable thing you can imagine, but on a warm March night in Greensboro, even the heroine, with school records and gaudy stat lines to spare, couldn't find the right ending.
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