Jan. 13, 2003
By PAUL NEWBERRY
AP Sports Writer
ATLANTA – The Duke Blue Devils made their first trip of the season to Atlanta. They don’t want it to be their last.
Playing in the city where the Final Four will be held in April, top-ranked Duke dominated the final 10 minutes and pulled away for a 79-59 victory over Georgia Tech on Monday night.
Earlier in the day, the Blue Devils (15-0, 3-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) took a brief tour of the Georgia Dome, only about a mile from the Tech campus. They snapped a few pictures and talked about the Final Four.
“It gives us a goal to keep in our minds,” said Iciss Tillis, who led the Blue Devils with 24 points and 14 rebounds. “That’s where we want to be.”
Duke star Alana Beard, coming off a 41-point performance at Virginia, scored only two points in the first half against the Yellow Jackets.
She got on track in the second half, finishing with 19 points and hitting the shot that put the Blue Devils ahead for good.
“We don’t want her to feel like she has to go out and score 40 points a game,” coach Gail Goestenkors said. “In the long run, it may be good for us that Alana struggled a little bit. She’s not going to make all her shots, but that’s OK.”
Still, it helps when she makes a few.
Beard was held to a pair of free throws in the first half, and Duke trailed 47-43 when a defensive play got her going. She stole the ball from Megan Isom and drove in for a layup with 12:41 remaining.
“I feed a lot off my defense,” Beard said.
She tied the game at 49 on another lay-in, then put the Blue Devils ahead to stay on a long 3-pointer with 9:42 to go.
“We came out flat,” Goestenkors said. “We looked tired. We weren’t emotional. We had our backs to the wall in the second half. We finally knew we had to step up and play with some emotion, some fire and take control of the game.”
When that happened, the Yellow Jackets (11-4, 0-3) totally fell apart. They went more that 6? minutes without making a shot and were outscored 30-10 over the final 10 minutes.
“There are 352 teams in the country, and 351 of them are not as good as Duke,” Georgia Tech coach Agnus Berenato said. “My compliments to Alana. She’s everything she’s touted to be.”
Beard was averaging 24.9 points per game and almost single-handedly led the Blue Devils to a 60-59 victory at Virginia last Thursday.
Guarded mostly by Isom, Beard missed all six of her first-half shots against Georgia Tech, finally scoring with 11.9 seconds remaining after getting fouled under her own basket going for a loose ball.
“I did a good job on her, but it doesn’t matter,” Isom said. “I didn’t finish it.”
Tillis scored 15 points in the opening period, helping to compensate for Beard’s slow start. The Blue Devils trailed 36-35 at the break.
“Iciss carried us in the first half,” Goestenkors said. “Iciss was the one person early on who attacked the basket for us.”
Cheered on by uncharacteristically large crowd of 3,592, the Yellow Jackets kept it close most of the way. The game was tied 11 times and there were 13 lead changes.
But Georgia Tech made only 8 of 36 shots (22 percent) in the second half, allowing the Blue Devils to pull away.
“We’re everybody’s big game,” Goestenkors said. “They’re going to be very emotional playing us. The mark of a championship team is to win those games.”
Fallon Stokes led the Yellow Jackets with 21 points, but Isom, with 13, was their only other player in double figures. All five Duke starters scored at least 10 points.
Georgia Tech has lost 19 in a row to the Blue Devils and dropped to 0-5 against No. 1 teams.
“For 37 minutes, we were with them,” Berenato said. “That’s improvement.”
