After every practice, having just finished off a series of sprints and an overall exhausting workout, Duke's players saunter over to the sidelines and grab a drink of water or a bag of ice to help quell their aching muscles. But not Alana Beard.
When Duke coach Gail Goestenkors blows a whistle on practice, Beard walks over to the free-throw line and begins her own routine. Last night against the visiting Tar Heels (14-13, 7-9 in the ACC), Beard's extra practice paid off in a big way for No. 4 Duke (25-3, 13-3), which closed out its fourth straight 20-win season with a 72-67 triumph on senior night and Goestenkors' 38th birthday.
With her team down by two points and 13.7 seconds remaining in the game, North Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell called timeout in order to ice Beard, who was about to shoot perhaps the biggest one-and-one of her career. As coolly as she does after every practice, Beard buried her free throws and the Tar Heels' NCAA tournament hopes along with them, barring a surprise run through the ACC tournament by seventh-seeded North Carolina.
"I was calm; I was in that situation once before this season," said Beard, who was named national freshman of the year yesterday by Sports Illustrated for Women. "Nothing can put pressure on you in that situation except yourself. It's just mental."
Although her 77.8 free-throw percentage, second among Duke's regulars, speaks for itself, there were more reasons than Beard's season-long consistency at the charity stripe for all 8,257 fans in attendance to have faith in Duke's forward.
"She's one of those players that thrive on that type of situation," Goestenkors said of Beard. "We have several people like that on the team, which makes you comfortable as a coach. I think everybody on the team felt like she would put those two free throws down."
After UNC guard Coretta Brown drove the length of the court to again close the gap to two points, the Tar Heels quickly called another timeout with 7.4 seconds left. During the break, Goestenkors scrapped the initial
Hatchell saw the exact same play nearly a year ago, but her players fell for it hook-line-and-sinker as if Goestenkors had just invented it during the timeout.
Early last March, the Blue Devils secured their first ever ACC tournament championship by eliminating the Tar Heels, who bit too hard on an inbound play with 12 seconds left. Team captain Lauren Rice took the ball and hurled it down the court to a streaking Georgia Schweitzer, who hauled in the baseball pass and buried UNC by assisting a game-breaking basket that capped Duke's three-point victory in the tournament finals. Last night, guard Sheana Mosch stepped to the baseline to re-enact the home-run play, which again worked like clockwork. When Schweitzer suddenly sprinted downcourt, Mosch lofted a pass over the entire UNC defense, hit Schweitzer directly on the numbers and forced a napping Brown to commit a decisive intentional foul with five seconds left.
"Sheana throws it better," said Schweitzer, referring to since-departed Rice, who is an assistant coach at South Alabama this season.
While the Tar Heels hurried off the court after their second heart-breaking defeat to the Blue Devils this season, Duke's seniors led a mad dash to center court, where they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of screaming students who were part of the second-largest home crowd in Duke women's basketball history.
UNC star LaQuanda Barksdale, who had an off shooting night but still scored 14 points and grabbed 15 rebounds, said the Tar Heels were surprised by the deep pass, but her coach insisted that Brown should not have been assessed an intentional foul.
"No, no, no; you need to talk to the ACC people about that," Hatchell said. "I would like an explanation myself, but no."
Before hammering home the nail in UNC's coffin with her perfect pass, Mosch rallied the Blue Devils from a 63-59 deficit late in the game. After
Mosch, who was the hero of Duke's victory over UNC last month in Chapel Hill, awakened after a slow start by grabbing a critical offensive rebound and nailing back-to-back three-pointers, the second of which put the Blue Devils up by two for the first time since the 6:10 mark.
"I was missing all game long; it was about time I hit something," said Mosch, who scored her eighth straight point on Duke's next possession when she banked in an awkward floater.
Although Duke had its sophomore star to thank for its thrilling comeback, it had its lucky stars to thank for even being in the game midway through the first half.
Schweitzer came out with an extra bounce in her step early in the game, scoring on three consecutive possessions in the game's opening three minutes and propelling Duke to a 16-10 lead at the first official timeout. By the next official timeout, however, the Blue Devils were still stuck on 16 points as the Tar Heels used a 12-0 run to open up a six-point lead of their own.
Schweitzer's early hot shooting turned ice cold as the senior missed four consecutive three-pointers before Beard threw a pass well over her teammates' heads and prompted the third official timeout, this time with Duke down seven, 29-22. The mental mistake by Beard let Carolina take its biggest lead of the game on its next possession, but the Tar Heels never ran away from the struggling and out-of-sync Blue Devils.
Instead, Beard came back out of the timeout and scored six consecutive points off two of her game-high four steals. Her personal mini-run re-energized her teammates and led Duke on a 15-2 run that made the game a back-and-forth battle until its climax.
"I don't really have much to say; I thought we played hard and I'm proud of my team," Hatchell said. "A few breaks here or there down the stretch and it would have been a different thing."
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