UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Six and a half minutes into last night's thrilling 88-87 victory over Penn State, Duke coach Gail Goestenkors had to make one of the tougher decisions of the young season.
Both of her star freshmen, Iciss Tillis and Alana Beard, were riding the bench after picking up a pair of early fouls. Beard and Tillis left the game at a television timeout five minutes into the first half with their team down by three points, but as they sat on the sideline, the deficit began to grow. Without hesitation, Goestenkors sent Beard, the preseason favorite for ACC rookie of the year, back to the scorer's table hardly a minute after she first left the game.
Goestenkors was bucking the odds, hoping her flashy but inexperienced guard could restrain herself from picking up her third foul. It was a plan that backfired. Less than two minutes after Beard re-entered the Duke lineup, she was called for her third foul and forced to leave the game with the Nittany Lions in possession of their largest lead of the night.
In for one foul-stricken freshman starter came another, as Tillis replaced Beard after the game's second television timeout. Two brief minutes of play later, she too picked up her third foul. Neither freshman returned the rest of the half, as the duo combined for a mere 14 minutes of play and seven points.
Without Tillis and Beard, the Blue Devils struggled through a dismal half of offense, but Goestenkors never once questioned her decision to re-insert her young play-makers.
"No, I don't really second-guess because at the time I felt like we needed to regain momentum," Goestenkors said. "I felt like the game was slipping away."
Duke survived the first half without Tillis and Beard, entering halftime tied with Penn State at 36-36.
The next 20 minutes would be an entirely different story for Duke's offense, though, as the two freshman starters began the half determined to make up for lost time. Both players exploded en route to career-high scoring performances, lifting Duke to a 52-point eruption of offense in the second half. Beard and Tillis, the two high-scorers for the Blue Devils, contributed 21 and 16 points, respectively, while their team scored as many points in the first 12 minutes after halftime as it did during the entire first half.
"At halftime, after I realized I might not be going back in, Alana and I, we said, 'We're gonna crank it up a notch,'" Tillis said.
That might have been the understatement of the night. Tillis and Beard were directly involved in the first 18 points of the half, as Duke rode its hot hands to a 54-50 lead following Tillis' second three-pointer in a three-minute span. At one point in the run, Tillis swiped the ball on the defensive end and went coast-to-coast for a casual lay-up that probably could have been a slam dunk had there been more separation from her opponent.
Tillis' sudden touch from three-point range also snapped Duke's 0-for-4 first-half funk from beyond the arc and spread Penn State's defense even thinner.
"I said if I was open, I was going to take it, but I wasn't going to force anything," Tillis said. "I think those two threes were critical because it forced them to step out and guard me and that opened things up for other people."
Beard, meanwhile, had to wait a while to take over the game after she picked up her fourth foul on a loose-ball scrap on the floor six minutes into the half. When she returned to the lineup a couple minutes later, the freshman displayed a considerable amount of poise and managed to stay in the game without fouling out.
Beard's presence late in the game helped the Blue Devils maintain a slim lead, as she began to go to work with just under six minutes remaining. After Penn State tied the game at 74-74, Beard slithered through the defense, dropped in an acrobatic lay-up and fouled out Nittany Lions center Rashana Barnes. One play later, she picked the ball from Penn State's Lisa Shepherd and went coast-to-coast for a basket that put the Blue Devils up by five points.
"I learned I can focus in tough situations," Beard said. "There was a lot of commotion and stuff going on outside the court. And I think I played halfway smart."
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