Yesterday, the Rutgers women’s basketball team faced what seemed like an insurmountable obstacle, the top-ranked Duke Blue Devils:
GREENSBORO, N.C., March 24 ? For 39 minutes 59.9 seconds, Rutgers and Duke had parried and countered through a gritty, intense N.C.A.A. women?s tournament regional semifinal game that had a frenzied final minute of momentum shifts and gasping, clutch plays.
Even after all that, there was still no winner.
So the game came down to the final tenth of the final second, the Scarlet Knights ahead by a point on a steal and layup by Epiphanny Prince, but the ball in the hands of Duke point guard Lindsey Harding, a Naismith Award finalist and the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year. Harding stood at the free-throw line, ready to carry the Blue Devils once again. Duke, seeded No. 1 and thought to be a certain Final Four participant, could not have wished for surer hands to guide it to its supposed destiny.
Until Harding missed not once, but twice. And as the buzzer sounded on the 53-52 victory by No. 4 seed Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights (25-8) screamed and cried and hugged on the Greensboro Coliseum court. The Duke players did the same, neither team ready to let the moment go and shake hands and return to their locker rooms. They stayed that way for a few minutes, the mostly Duke crowd just as stunned.
But perhaps it was fate, after all.
?I truly believed that it was our destiny,? Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer said. ?And so for 40 minutes, we sustained and won against what I consider the best team to be assembled in women?s basketball in some time.?
Rutgers advanced to the Greensboro Regional final on Monday against No. 3 Arizona State, which knocked off No. 7 Bowling Green in the other semifinal, 67-49.
If this was destiny, it was also payback for a Rutgers team that had lost to Duke, 85-45, on Dec. 4. More than three months had passed since that game, but the defeat was unforgettable in the minds of the Rutgers players and their coach.
And now, revenge is sweet.
