Women's tennis wallops VCU in Sheffield Center
(02/26/01 5:00am)
Duke received a little extra help from Virginia Commonwealth yesterday afternoon at the Sheffield Center.
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Duke received a little extra help from Virginia Commonwealth yesterday afternoon at the Sheffield Center.
It looks relatively unassuming from the front. Just another building among many around Duke's campus.
On the students' senior night at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke (24-3, 11-2 in the ACC) honored its most recognizable near-graduate, and Shane Battier reciprocated by heading a 98-54 systematic unraveling of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (15-10, 7-7).
Deep in the heart of Texas, having seen all the members of his posse snipped off early, Duke senior Ramsey Smith tried to smoke the remaining competition.
The top-ranked Blue Devils will certainly be favored when they take on the Davidson Wildcats tonight at 7 p.m. in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The Blue Devils can play all the CBA, national and synagogue-league teams they want, but nothing ever compares to the rush of the regular season. "Over the summer you forget how exciting it is to play at Duke," senior Shane Battier said. "You come in here with the band and the crowd; it's really special." Know what else is special? Hitting 9-of-12 from three-point land and scoring 29 points against a team that has led the NCAA in defense the last 12 years. "I had great looks," Battier said nonchalantly. "I had great teammates to get me the ball. Chris [Duhon] and Jason [Williams] did a fantastic job of that tonight." Even though he knocked down as many three-pointers as Princeton had first-half field goals, Battier did not surprise anybody with his play last night. "It is not unusual," coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "It's not a once-in-a-career type of thing. He can flat-out shoot and our players look for him." Duke sought to use this contest to respond to several question marks that loomed over the team during the preseason. Williams answered some questions about 10 minutes into the evening. While Battier may be the Blue Devils' ambassador, Williams has fully assumed his rightful position as their court general. When Duke had a narrow 22-20 lead midway through the first half, Williams, obviously irritated by the closeness of the game, charged up the court screaming at his troops to improve their play. Later that possession, he splashed a three-pointer. Before the Tigers could figure out why they had ever chosen to come to Cameron in the first place, they found themselves on the wrong end of a 27-5 run, hopelessly trailing 49-25 at the half. In contrast to Williams' successful 17-point, seven-assist performance, highly touted freshman guard Duhon did not put to rest any questions about his abilities. Instead, he wrote an entirely new chapter. "I think Duhon was just wanting to play defense and find other players," Krzyzewski said. "He wasn't hunting for his shot because he knows he can play well without shooting." While Krzyzewski has seen too many youngsters come through Cameron to know not to rail on them on their first night, it was obvious that he was trying to put a positive spin on a mediocre situation. Duhon did pass for eight assists in his 24-minute debut, but he also led the team in both personal fouls and turnovers. In addition, he only took three shots, all tentative and from behind the arc, making none of them. The other East Campus warrior, Andre Sweet, did not look very comfortable in his first regular-season game either. Sweet, who finished with four points on 1-of-5 shooting from the floor, looked noticeably flustered when fighting for position under the boards. Despite the freshman jitters, Duke still displayed remarkable chemistry for a mid-November battle. Williams and Duhon spread the offense out well enough to drain 15 threes, the defense forced 20 Tiger turnovers which were converted into 34 of Duke's 87 points and the front line crashed the boards to the tune of 12 offensive rebounds and 15 second-chance points. Duke's play also shattered several Princeton records, new and old. The Tigers had not allowed as many as 87 points since yielding 88 to UMass in the 1995-96 campaign. And Princeton had not suffered such a lopsided defeat since falling to Cornell by 37 in 1946. Last night, the Blue Devils did not look like the best team that Princeton had faced since the Truman administration, but they definitely dropped their first bomb on their march to the Metrodome.
RALEIGH - N.C. State came within 32 seconds of receiving no alumni donations this year.
When the Duke football team hits Bobby Dodd/Grant Field at high noon tomorrow, Atlantans will see a game featuring two teams going in entirely different directions.
Bogged down recently by a packed conference schedule, the volleyball team has not dominated its competition the way it once appeared possible.
"Wow, I need to catch my breath. What a wild night!" Blue Devils' coach Jolene Nagel gasped, just moments after her team's five-game marathon victory against ACC rival Clemson.
They did not dominate.
You look the girl of your dreams in the eyes. You move in to kiss her, and BAM!, she spits in your face and professes her love for the kid in the back of your Orgo class who sports a pocket protector.
ALIBU, Calif. - Sometimes a team's reach is simply no match for its aspirations. When Karin Palme's volley slipped past Katie Granson's outstretched racquet and into the open court behind her, Duke's sixth-ranked women's tennis team (23-5) faced the harsh reality that its hopes for a national title were going to wait yet another year. "This is what we play for all season," junior Megan Miller said. "Absolutely everything needs to be in place. We went in to do battle, but the Sun Devils' just came out firing today." Having reached four consecutive Final Fours, Duke's bitter Sweet 16 exit against an insurgent 11th-ranked Arizona State (14-7) team seemed slightly premature. Nevertheless, this year's squad bore little resemblance to the previous four installments. Traveling to ritzy Malibu, Calif., the 2000 women's tennis team, unlike its predecessors, had tasted the sourness of an ACC defeat and the sweetness of emerging from that loss to capture an impressive 13th straight conference title. If nothing else, the Blue Devils knew how to strive in the face of adversity, but ASU-having weathered its own share of misfortune throughout the season after numerous key injuries-withstood the mounting tension with a gracefulness that outshone Duke's. In every tight situation, Duke yielded to the pressure, allowing ASU to reach the quarterfinals. The Blue Devils' inability to win the big points is the primary reason for their early summer vacation. "We were in positions to win sets and games, but in pressure we pretty much folded," coach Jamie Ashworth said. "Whereas Arizona State came up with big shots in tight situations, we tended to sit back on our heels and watch the point unfold. We needed to be much more aggressive to win today." The Sun Devils quickly assumed control of the match after collecting convincing, straight-set victories at Nos. 1, 3 and 5 singles. Seemingly unfazed by their teammates' losses, junior Kathy Sell and sophomore Erica Biro dismantled their opponents, making the overall match score 3-2. The momentum of the overall match thus hinged directly upon the result of the No. 6 singles' contest between two gutsy freshmen, ASU's Mhairi Brown and Duke's Prim Siripipat. Though it was a best-of-three-set match, the first-set tiebreaker proved to be the match's deciding factor. Dismantling Siripipat with a big baseline game, Brown snatched the tiebreaker 7-2. Tired and lacking her previous level of intensity, Siripipat hobbled into the second set. When she dropped the fourth game after two failed break-point opportunities, Siripipat finally folded, eventually losing 7-6 (7-2), 6-2. Her defeat cornered Duke in a 4-2 hole in the overall match heading into doubles play, one point away from defeat. Yet the Blue Devils were simply concentrating on getting all three doubles points. "We had no reason to worry," Ashworth said. "Our doubles' teams were just as good as theirs." Duke's No. 1 doubles team of Biro and Brooke Siebel, the lone senior, played inspired tennis against the 18th-ranked ASU team of Allison Bradshaw and Celena McCoury and had an opportunity to seize their match. But when Palme, paired with senior Kerry Giardino, finessed a backhand volley for a crosscourt winner against Granson and Sell, the fate of the Blue Devils' rollercoaster season was sealed. And all that was left was to get ready for next year. "It's never too early to start thinking about next year's chances," said Sell, the Blue Devils' on-court leader. "We now come into next year's season with that much more experience in NCAA matches."
The women's lacrosse team survived a last-ditch attempt at a comeback by fifth-ranked North Carolina Wednesday for an 8-7 win over its 15-501 archenemy.
As Erick Barkley and Bootsy Thornton rejoiced on the Cameron hardwood Saturday in front of 9,314 Cameron Crazies, many of whom had been holed up in a tent for at least the previous 10 days, the Blue Devils (22-4, 13-1 in the ACC) received a harsh lesson in the rollercoaster ride that is a college basketball season.
After unexpectedly seeing its 46-game home winning streak vanish at the hands of Maryland last week, third-ranked Duke returns home in search of reasserting its homecourt dominance tonight at 9 p.m. against Florida State.
Losing a national player of the year normally leaves college teams in a shaky position at best. Having tasted victory during that person's reign, the next year's team now must grow accustomed to a slightly less-charmed life.
CHAPEL HILL - For 11 seasons, the only place parity has ever found in any place in ACC women's tennis has been in a well-timed punchline. There's been Duke, and there's been everybody else. The Blue Devils have reeled off an 11-year, 113-match winning streak, but if last weekend's ACC Indoor Tournament is any indication, 2000 might look little like seasons past. The tournament saw Wake Forest receive five of the eight singles seeds en route to claiming all three possible titles-singles, doubles and consolation singles. And for a team trying to vaunt itself over a dozen-year hump, it might be all the motivation the Demon Deacons need. "This is the first year in a while in the ACC that we're going to have some tough competition," said Erica Biro, Duke's probable No. 3 player. "Last year, we won the finals in about an hour. It was ridiculous. So it's good to have some competition. But we're confident we can win again." The Blue Devils, who graduated three 100-match winners from last year's record-setting team, rested their top two players, Megan Miller and Kathy Sell. The Demon Deacons, however, left only top seed Mariel Verban at home. The result was a Wake Forest whitewash of the seedings and a sneak preview, at least at the bottom of the lineup, of the conference's most eagerly anticipated match in years. And if nothing else, Biro will never have to worry about being unprepared for the Wake Forest lineup. The sophomore faced five separate Deacons on her way to the semifinals in both doubles and singles as she became the only player other than Wake Forest's Adria Engel to appear in both semis. Unranked this season largely because of a light fall schedule, Biro, who spent nearly all of last season in the top 100, almost had her first Deacon opponent be her last. After watching Biro drop a frustrating first set to No. 7 seed Maren Haus, head coach Jamie Ashworth gave his top entrant a little between-set advice. And it couldn't have worked better. Biro promptly reeled of the next seven games in the match, riding the momentum through a tightly contested third set. "It was like I was playing the worst tennis of my life," Biro said of her opening set. "I probably couldn't have made two balls in the court if I tried. When [Ashworth] suggested I change, I had nothing to lose.... All of sudden I started winning game after game. I was glad to pull it off." But for the Deacons, the third time was the charm. After beating Wake's Jackie Houston-who was ranked 42nd in the last ITA poll and seeded fourth in the tournament-Biro fell to sixth-ranked Adria Engel, the tournament's eventual champion and the only top-10 player entered. The Demon Deacon quickly won the first nine games of the match and ended the semifinal contest before it seemed to get started. "[Engel] came out on fire. It was like I was playing Steffi Graf," Biro said. "It wasn't like I was really doing anything wrong. You have to give her credit." And doubles was a repeat performance. Biro and senior Brooke Siebel, the Blue Devils' No. 2 tandem from a year ago, knocked off the No. 8 seed, Janet Bergman and Annemarie Milton of Wake Forest, in the third round. But after winning the first three games of their semifinal match, the Duke duo couldn't hold off the sixth-seeded team of Bea Bielik and Engel. "Our top players can succeed, especially in doubles," Biro said of the Blue Devils' future matchups with the Demon Deacons. "We're strong one through three-we're pretty solid there. But it definitely won't be a walk in the park."
Coach Mike Krzyzewski's homecoming to Chicago tonight will not be a particularly festive affair for the celebrated Blue Devil coach.
The top-ranked women's golf team, which had steamrolled through its first three tournaments of the year, could not overcome its shaky start this weekend at the Mercedes-Benz Women's Golf Championship and failed to win a tournament for the first time this year.