Abby Waner made her first shot attempt of the night, a 3-pointer, less than three minutes into the game. It had the beginnings of a perfect senior night.
Then she missed her next long jumper. Then the next one after that. Then 12 more over the course of the contest.
But none of that mattered in the end.
With her team down 78-76 with less than a minute left in overtime, Waner found her 3-point stroke when Duke needed it most. The senior canned a 3-pointer to put her team ahead for good and help seal the Blue Devils' first win against North Carolina in two years.
"Everything came together," Waner said. "Then to go into overtime with your arch-rival in a very crucial game that can have an impact on seedings, yeah, I would say it was a pretty good way to go out."
Waner's final shot was far from the easiest one she had attempted all night. She received the ball from junior Joy Cheek in front of the Duke bench several feet from the 3-point line. Then she stopped, settled herself and let it fly despite the tight defense and the distance from the basket. You would have never known such a gutsy shot came from a player shooting just 7 percent on the night.
When asked what she was thinking, Waner responded with the honest truth.
"I wasn't," she said with a chuckle. "Joy made a great steal, and I knew to follow. We always stress following somebody. She made a great pass, and I wasn't thinking. It was just simply ball-basket. You just have to dumb it down sometimes.
"It just has to be next play. In basketball, if you overthink it too much, then you get inside your own head. Sometimes it is better just to let it all play out on the court instead of in your head, because then you miss 14."
After that fateful shot, Waner finally cracked a smile. It was a fairy tale ending for one the Blue Devils' most beloved players, who had tears in her eyes as the final buzzer sounded.
"This game is a very good sample of what the four years have been," Waner said. "It's been really, really good, and then it's also been really difficult at times too. That's the life of a college athlete. That all culminated at one point."
One of her teammates, sophomore Jasmine Thomas, made sure to keep Waner in the game. In between taking over the overtime period by scoring eight of Duke's 13 points, the young point guard made sure the senior leader did not let herself get in the way.
"I think she is a great shooter. She is a great player," Thomas said of Waner. "She brings so much energy to this team that I could not have had her thinking about the last shot. I needed her to stay with us, and she did, and she definitely hit the shot we needed."
After the game, the 14 attempts sandwiched between the two big treys were irrelevant. All that mattered was the final score projected on the video board above the three seniors standing at halfcourt delivering their final words of wisdom to the Cameron Crazies.
"What I'm learning is that it's completely about the process," Waner said in her speech. "It's about the four years I spent here.... I can only hope that I have given back to Cameron half of what Cameron has given to me."
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