One last deadline gone by
(04/24/01 4:00am)
The bells.
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The bells.
GREENSBORO - For a second straight season, Duke coach Gail Goestenkors laced her hands around the rim of the Greensboro Coliseum-knuckles pressed white against the metal, bathed in the wash of stadium and camera lights-and flashed a smile broader than the outside skyline to the throng of media staring up, almost as if they expected her to plant a flag there.
CHAPEL HILL - Baptism by tobacco juice.
CHAPEL HILL - With the Blue Devils' starting center Carlos Boozer helplessly balancing on crutches on the sideline, Duke reeling from a Senior Night loss to Maryland and UNC set to celebrate its first ACC title since 1995-"the kegs were probably already lined up on Franklin Street," Shane Battier said-yesterday was supposed to be a night for Carolina to remember.
ATLANTA - The bad news for Georgia Tech wasn't just that Alana Beard was back.
Familiar face. Unfamiliar result.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - It takes some players a full four years to become stars in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - For the second time in three seasons, the Duke-Maryland men's basketball game took a backseat to the postgame antics of the Cole Field House crowd.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - The Alana Beard-less Blue Devils didn't have to be perfect to win after all.
NEW YORK - Of all the things Duke basketball may have lost over the past few seasons, a flair for the dramatic is not one of them.
NEW YORK - Consider it at least fitting and at most prophetic that Friday night's championship game was played in New York.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Blue Devils probably did not need a career night from a captain to knock off the Princeton Tigers. Shane Battier gave them one anyway. The senior player of the year candidate scored 29 points and hit a school record nine three-pointers to lead the No. 2 Blue Devils (1-0) over a pesky Princeton club (0-1) 87-50 in Cameron Indoor Stadium last night. "It was a good win for us," said coach Mike Krzyzewski, who moved within a single win of the 500-win mark at Duke. "We played hard when we had to. They're so disciplined in their offense that they could have caused us trouble." But trouble only had one name last night, and it was Battier. The senior connected on 9-of-12 three-pointers, including all six of his second half-attempts, breaking Will Avery's school record of eight set two years ago against Florida. "I got great looks," Battier said. "My teammates got me the ball when I was open and then I hit the shots. It felt great tonight." After misfiring on his first attempt on Duke's second possession of the evening, Battier finally connected from behind the arc less than four minutes into the half, giving him his first points of the night and giving his team an 8-6 advantage it would not relinquish the rest of the night. A 12-3 run by the Blue Devils, which included Battier's second three-pointer of the night, gave Duke a 20-12 advantage, but it did not finish the Tigers. Led by Nate Walton, son of former NBA star Bill Walton, the Tigers executed Princeton's trademark motion-offense from the high post and mounted an 11-2 run to pull back within two at 22-20. "Defensively, we were still playing well," Krzyzewski said of the run. "The offense wasn't good. We rushed things. We wanted to blow them out. We didn't' have any patience on the offensive end and it broke us down on defense." And as quickly as Princeton had made a game of it, the Blue Devils turned the game into their own highlight reel. Senior co-captain Nate James scored six straight points, including a breakaway dunk, and sophomore Mike Dunleavy added an impressive follow-up jam on a rare missed three by Battier as the Blue Devils launched a 24-5 run that ended the half with a 49-25 score and effectively ended the game. "Losing the lead was disappointing," said a worn John Thompson after losing his first game as a head coach. "We just got tired and we didn't have subs. Duke is a great team and they will wear you down. They wore us down." But the offensive show was not through. Led by three more three-pointers from Battier (Nos. 4, 5 and 6) and a pair from point guard Jason Williams, who dished out seven assists to go with 17 points, the Blue Devils connected on seven straight three-point attempts, pushing the Duke advantage to 34 points. "They just played a hell of a game," Thompson said. "At one point, I thought Battier had 20 three-pointers." Mike Bechtold led the overmatched Princeton team with 12 points, but with a team depleted due to injury, he and the Tigers could do little more than watch as Duke made quick work of the game and Battier, with 5:39 to play, made history with his ninth three-pointer of the night. "He's just a tremendous player," Thompson said. "Being 6-foot-8 and hitting threes these days isn't odd, but hitting that many at any size is odd. He just causes matchup problems not because he's tall, but because he can do everything." For Battier, a preseason All-American, the game proved to be just another clip in an ever-growing career scrap book. But to his team, the win, which was the worst defeat Princeton had suffered in 46 years, meant a lot more. "After starting out 0-2 last year, it feels great," Battier said. "Now we just need to carry that momentum on." Note: Sophomore Nick Horvath, who is sidelined with continuing ankle problems, is not expected to play Friday when the Blue Devils meet Villanova, a first-round winner over Fairfield, in Cameron at 9 p.m.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - In a blustery one-word postgame admission, more shrug than press-conference answer, Gail Goestenkors blurted out the single-word curse and the single-word blessing of her No. 5 Blue Devils.
She would have scanned the rows behind the Duke bench for his face, but she knew he was not there.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There are a lot of things Shane Battier can do. He can show up to the ACC's basketball press conference in a drab olive suit. He can show up to said preseason press conference in said drab olive suit and make it look good-real good. He can become preseason favorite for national player of the year despite never having been the best offensive player on his team. He can even become the favorite for said award despite a penchant for said drab olive suits. But there's one thing Shane Battier can't do: absent-mindedly twirl a championship ring. "Hmmph," he says, making a sound more Eeyore than preseason player of the year, when asked why he came back for his senior season, his thumb tapping his ring finger like he was beating out his own heart rate. His coach, Mike Krzyzewski, twirls. Matt Doherty twirls between jokes about bringing some guy named Michael Jordan (who twirls in waves of sixes these days) back for a senior season. Even Dave Odom twirls these days in his own NIT kind of way. And our drab olive Eeyore sits tapping his finger, surrounded by the media like a well-studied painting in the Louvre. And then he speaks the obvious. "I came back to get a ring." But it's not get, not really, it's more like reclaim. There was a time when he had four rings. One for each of the members of his recruiting class, the recruiting class that would make Duke Duke again, the class that would march to San Antonio and St. Petersburg and Indianapolis and Minneapolis and into the rafters of Cameron. Battier, Brand, Avery and Burgess. Three seasons before the program had fallen apart. A 2-14 ACC record in 1995 signaled the end of one of the most incredible runs in NCAA history-seven Final Fours in nine years. Even in 1997, the bright red gash had turned into a bruised purple. In hushed tones, they talked like conspirators in their Bassett dorm rooms, matching the sounds of the North Carolina summer outside. They spoke in a rapid staccato of titles and banners and championships voices rising and falling beat by beat, muted only by the dull hum of an air conditioner and the bond of secrecy they had-four against the world. And they talked of rings, rings with giant diamond studs that rose like mountains and deep blue finishes that might as well have been oceans. "When I came here with the four guys that came in, we talked about winning four national championships up in the night thinking as freshmen," Battier says, flashing his million-dollar smile that would make you believe the sky was yellow if he so insisted. "That's why I came back." They were Remus and they were Romulus and they wore baggy shorts with a D on the side that meant more than any letter had ever before and meant everything and meant just one thing, one number-one. Four years, four guys, four titles, but always No. 1. Second place was like a round earth, it didn't exist until somebody proved it to them. And nobody did until they did and when they did it wasn't even second, it was a hopelessly flailed shot and a 17-point lead gone and it was eighth. When it finally was second, it was over. Brand, Avery, Burgess. Battier. The 1999 NCAA tournament ended with a loss in the finals-an improbable, impossible loss in the finals-and suddenly the letters and numbers didn't mean so much. Except to Battier. It was obvious from the beginning that while most Duke basketball stars of the '90s grew out of the Christian Laettner branch of the family, Battier had sprung from the Grant Hill side. And when the rest of his class parted ways, the torch went from Grant to Trajan Langdon to Shane. About that same time, he decided to major in religion, probably because right then he understood a whole lot of what it meant to be God. The expectations hadn't gotten any lower and instead of four against the world, it was one man trying to patch together a sinking ship. Nobody knew how it was going to right itself, they just knew who to look to. You could've called him Atlas, for he too had to shoulder the weight of the world, but he never had to dribble a basketball while doing it. But the spotlight didn't slow him down-he adjusted. He played like Earl Monroe, talked like James Monroe and found a cult following like Marilyn Monroe. Whatever did not kill him made him stronger. And after his junior year was over and another mythical ring disappeared into another empty night and into the strains of someone else's version of "One Shining Moment," he decided to come back to reclaim what was his, what was Elton's, what was Will's, what was Chris's and most importantly, what was Duke's. He didn't come back to play with this team-he came back to lead it. "There's no question that this is Shane's team," Krzyzewski said. "Shane will go down as one of the top players ever in this conference. Shane's going to be up there with just about anybody." He apologizes for everything-early entry in the NBA, not being Chris Carrawell-though he gets blamed for nothing. He's the kind of man every mother wants to find on their daughter's arm and for his greatest trick, he can even make Krzyzewski gush. Getting Krzyzewski to gush is like getting the Pope to deliver Mass in Hebrew. "I'd love to see him when he gets on a roll not to be too humble," Krzyzewski said. "Shane can score in every way. I'd like to see him take the shots that he is practicing. Grant was a little bit like that. Grant wouldn't do all of the shots he was capable of. Part of it is being such a team guy.... There wasn't anybody better than him the second half of last year. He carried our basketball team." Dead-lifted, cleaned, jerked and then carried, to be exact. And after two seasons of representing not just Duke but college basketball, he came back for another. He came back for his brother, he came back to graduate ("I know it's unconventional thinking nowadays," he quips) and he came back to try something he's never done before-shutting the hell up. "I'm my mother's boy," Battier said. "I love to talk. One of my goals this year is to shut up. Last year, because there were so many young guys, I found myself constantly blabbing. And although I had a good year, I felt that sometimes I could have been better. So my goal this year is to shut up and let younger guys be more vocal." And he's going to do whatever he has to do, because he's Shane Battier and because there's one thing he desperately wants to do. "When it comes down to it," Battier says, eyes sparking a smile he won't let his face reveal, "I came back to get a ring." That, too, is something Shane Battier can do.
Generally I come out here and do my little schtick. I make with the ha-ha because this is sports and because it doesn't make one difference in the world.
Second place has never much been Amanda Johnson's style.
In case you missed it (and with the Duke TV deal consisting of two goats and a cathode ray tube you probably did), the football team is on its way to another crap-tacular season.
ATLANTA - On a sun-soaked Saturday afternoon in Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium, the only thing clearer than the north Georgia sky was the meaning of the tired expression that sat upon Carl Franks' face like a well-worn mask-losing is getting old.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - After then-No. 1 Florida State lost to Miami on a last-second missed field goal a week ago, coach Bobby Bowden said quarterback Chris Weinke would have to do a lot of performing to get back into the Heisman Race.