Alana Beard sits on the sidelines of Cameron Indoor Stadium doubled over with her head between her knees.
Seven feet away, her sophomore classmate and fellow ACC first-team selection Iciss Tillis looks intently toward the halfcourt line. With her right elbow resting upon her left arm that she had already crossed around her stomach, Tillis grabs her chin, nods her head and declares, "This is just unacceptable, girls."
Tillis continues her Gail Goestenkors impression until she has extracted each possible cheap laugh out of the crowd of reporters and fellow teammates, then triumphantly returns back to her seat as the still reigning stand-up comedy champion of the women's basketball team.
While all the media stiffs laugh nervously, not knowing how to conduct themselves in such an uncharacteristically loose press conference environment, Alana Beard gasps, choking upon her laughter. "Oh, that is so good," she says.
From Tillis' inspired work of comedic genius to the players' off-court rapport with one another to the team's on-court dominance, the women's basketball team does not suffer from a lack of interpersonal camaraderie.
"We are a much closer team than we ever were before," Goestenkors said. "We have great belief in one another and in our [overall] abilities."
Despite how natural their jovial interaction seems at this point in the season, life as a member of the women's basketball team was not always this chirpy.
With the team a disappointing 5-2 after troubling losses to Toledo and South Carolina, sophomores Rometra Craig and Crystal White decided they could best serve their interests elsewhere, opting to transfer at the end of the first semester.
At this key juncture in early December, with only an eight-person roster and a mediocre start of the season to show for themselves, the Blue Devils could not have known that the departures of Craig and White would serve to galvanize a team that previously stood on precarious ground.
"I think that before [they left], we still had fun playing, but we did not maximize our potential," senior Krista Gingrich said. "We just settled.... We take every game seriously now, and have fun while we do it."
Fielding only eight players, however, can create some disadvantages for Duke as it heads into the highly pressurized ACC and NCAA Tournament environments. First, if its frontcourt players commit some early fouls, the thin nature of its bench could generate insurmountable matchup problems. Also, the threat of injury always serves as a potential source of queasiness.
The team dismisses these potential negatives, instead hailing all the advantages of playing with such a small roster.
"Everybody accepts and understands her role at this point," Goestenkors explained. "Everybody knows they are going to play significant minutes in every game, and there's a level of confidence gained when you know that you are going to get in every game.... You don't have to look over your shoulder because there's nobody over there to look at."
Gingrich and sophomore Vicki Krapohl have especially reaped these benefits. With a 10-person lineup, the two point guards would not have been given as much time to make the valuable contributions that they have been able to this year.
The Blue Devils' 19-1 record since going to the shrunken roster does not look so bad either.
Whether or not it helps their chances of postseason success remains dubious, but playing with only eight women has undoubtedly improved relations within the locker room to the point that even Goestenkors stands as a target for some good-natured ribbing.
And a sense of humor does not hurt in March.
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