STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. -- Women's tennis coach Jamie Ashworth set his postseason lineup a month ago looking ahead to the teams he thought Duke would have to beat to win a national championship.
Although she only lost one dual match all season, 10th-ranked Amanda Johnson was moved to the third singles slot in the team's lineup in favor of 31st-ranked Megan Miller, who Ashworth believed stacked up better against perennial powers Stanford and Florida. In the NCAA quarterfinals last Friday, however, this tactical maneuver proved costly against sixth-seeded Vanderbilt, which shocked the second-ranked Blue Devils 4-1 at the Lincoln Tennis Center. The Commodores, who were playing in their first ever NCAA quarterfinals, eventually lost in the national championship match Monday against Stanford.
Johnson crushed her opponent 6-1, 6-0 at No. 3 singles for Duke's only victory, while Miller struggled to a 6-4, 7-5 defeat at No. 2 singles in the day's decisive match. With the Blue Devils engaged in tight matches at Nos. 1 and 5 singles that were abandoned when Vanderbilt's Sarah Riske closed out Miller, a flip-flop of the singles lineup might have lifted Duke into the semifinals against the Georgia Bulldogs.
"You [set your lineup] before you see your draw," Ashworth said. "I think they can both win at either place. I was thinking game styles against teams we might face, Vanderbilt not being one of them."
Duke began its match by dropping the doubles point as it had one day earlier in a 4-2 victory over 13th-ranked Texas. Unlike their match against the Longhorns, however, the Blue Devils did not rebound by taking four of the six singles matches.
Johnson squared the dual match at 1-1 with her one-hour whipping of Vanderbilt's Jenny Miller, but Duke dug itself one-set deficits on three of the remaining five courts.
At No. 6 singles, Hillary Adams squandered a 0-40 service break opportunity that would have tied the first set at 3-3, as the Commodores' Kelly Schmandt negated Johnson's victory with a 6-2, 6-2 triumph of her own. Meanwhile, Duke senior Kathy Sell played an uncharacteristically conservative match against unranked Kate Burson, whose 6-1, 6-4 upset provided Vanderbilt with a pivotal win.
"The match that was very, very big was Sell's," said Vanderbilt coach Geoff Macdonald, who vacated Duke's head coaching position in 1994 because he felt he could build a similarly strong program at Vanderbilt. "Sell is a warrior. When you look at other teams and other players, you admire her. You respect the way she fights."
But after enduring one of her most miserable sets of the season, the normally vocal Sell lacked the peppiness that her teammates fed off of for four years. As Sell tried to hang on in the second set, all of the pressure began to build around court two, where classmate and co-captain Megan Miller relinquished the final five games of the first set following an early 4-1 lead.
In the second set, Miller, who dropped the last three service games of her first set, continued to struggle with her serves. Despite breaking Riske's serve three times in the second set, Miller never capitalized. Riske neutralized her own problems by utilizing a spattering of double faults by Miller to break in four of the five final service games. When Riske again broke to claim a 6-5 edge, she finally closed out Miller and Duke with a booming ace into the corner on the ad-court, causing Ashworth to slump his head to his knees as his tearful senior sat despondently beside him on the bench.
"I think in a lot of ways [serving] was really my Achilles' tendon," Miller said. "I've had trouble with my serves all year. When it really comes down to mental over physical, there are little things that tend to show up even though you don't want them to."
Ashworth said it was the mental mistakes that plagued all of his players, not just Miller.
"I think what hurt us is we haven't been in a tough match since February," said Ashworth. "We've been getting away with things the last few matches that you can't get away with against the teams that are here."
Notes: Freshman Ansley Cargill, who yesterday advanced to the quarterfinals of the singles championships, said she is "90 percent" sure she will return to Duke next year rather than play professional tennis.... Sell bowed out of the singles tournament yesterday in the round of 16, while teammates Johnson and Miller lost in the opening round Tuesday afternoon.... Johnson and Miller were eliminated from the doubles tournament yesterday.
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