It's the day after baseball season is over ... but for Duke senior Sheana Mosch, it was over awhile ago. Like, as soon as the eventual-champ Angels beat her Yankees.

	Iciss Tillis, right, will look to be more physical in the paint this season.

"It's been pretty traumatic,'' she said. "Mostly, I've been staying away from the TV.''

Of course, for the sick-of-the-Yankees legion, anybody but them winning the World Series is a pleasant thing. Which segues us into the Duke program: The Blue Devils, ESPN.com's pick for preseason No. 1, want to make that jump into the "oh, not them again'' category.

That's when you know you've made it.

People say that about Connecticut, Tennessee and even Louisiana Tech. Nobody's surprised when they're in the Final Four. In fact, if they get knocked off before then, it's a big story.

When Duke did it to Tennessee in 1999 in the Elite Eight, it was a great story. The underdogs overcoming the dynasty. It was exhilarating for Duke. The kind of game where the winners can't go to sleep afterwards, they feel like the sun just started rotating around the earth.

It was terrific, Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said ... and she hopes she never really feels that way again.

"Everybody wants to be the underdog, that can take pressure off,'' Goestenkors said. "But there's a reason that you're the underdog -- because you're not as good as the other team. And I don't want to be part of that reason if I can avoid it.

"When you've worked so long and hard to try to get to the top, with that comes the responsibility of being known as a 'favorite.' It puts a target on your back. But it's like a quote I put up for my team the other day: 'If you're not leading the pack, the scenery never changes.' ''

Now, does that mean Coach G thinks the Blue Devils are top dog now? No, she's realistic about the talent around the country, especially again at Tennessee. And let's not forget until someone knocks them off, even having lost the Fab Four, the UConn Huskies are the reigning champions.

Not to mention that the ACC, young overall last year, should be considerably better.

But Goestenkors, who now has taken Duke to two Final Fours, isn't shying from the expectations. Yeah, she'll tell you how the basketballs are flying around in practice because the freshmen don't know what they're doing yet, and how she's frustrated with execution, but ...

She also acknowledges that this is the best collection of talent she's ever coached, up from last year's Gang of Eight that lost to Oklahoma in the national semifinals.

Has Duke gone into a season before having a chance to win the NCAA title? Sure. But Duke hasn't previously faced that last rung on the ladder of "Well, they probably should win it all.'' They're really close to that this year.

Not everyone truly wants to be in that position. They don't want to say out loud that the season's really not going to be complete without a national championship. It's like working without a safety net.

Even fewer, of course, try to do that every season. Tennessee's Pat Summitt is one, obviously, and she points out Duke and Purdue in particular as programs that have made consistent progress getting there. Oklahoma also looks like it's doing the same thing.

"It depends on the personality of a head coach, as to whether they stick their neck out,'' Summitt said. "You can set your sights and speak about playing for a championship. My position's always been, 'We're going to tell it like it is.' If we have a team that we think can do it, we say so.''

Goestenkors has had a similar mindset from the first day she took over a Duke program that then shared a pink-lockered changing room with the field hockey team. A program that rarely had been relevant even in its own conference.

That was 10 years ago, and every step forward Duke has taken has been a potential foot in the door of the next big recruit. That's the key: getting talent. And Duke has it.

Alana Beard's the All-American, a versatile junior wing player who spent extra time in the weight room this summer.

"She needed to get a little stronger, and she realized that on her own,'' Goestenkors said. "After the Oklahoma game, she said she was so tired she couldn't move. And she didn't want to feel that way again.''

Iciss Tillis, a 6-foot-4 junior center, has accepted she needs to play in a physical way on the interior that doesn't come naturally to her. Helping that are two of Duke's rookies, Mistie Bass and Brooke Smith, who are both 6-3.

"I've told Iciss it's good for her to have two freshmen post players who look up to her but yet can really push her,'' Goestenkors said. "They're very physical, and that's what Iciss needs in practice.''

Duke's two sophomores, wing players Monique Currie and Wynter Whitley, were big contributors last year and Goestenkors is happy with how they've prepared for this season.

The Devils' three other freshmen, all guards, were recruited for specific needs. Lindsey Harding is the quickest player on the team and will be groomed as a point guard behind steady junior Vicki Krapohl. Harding also is an on-the-ball defender in Beard's mold, so she'll be able to spell Beard in pressuring the opponent's point.

Caitlin Howe and Jessica Foley are long-range shooters. Foley is an Aussie who, like so many of her Down Under countrywomen, is advanced in the fundamentals. Basketball smart, you might call it, an Aussie hallmark.

Howe hasn't made her first college basket yet, but already has scored points with her on-line player diary. In just two entries, she's informed us that her three-girl, three-boy family resembles the "Brady Bunch,'' that several of the Blue Devils paid 50 cents to see a huge pig at the North Carolina state fair and that Mosch showed her veteran savvy at the fair as a clever food mooch.

Which brings us to the seniors, Mosch and Michele Matyasovsky. Each might be the big cheese on many teams, but they are cogs at Duke. That's the other part of ascending to that highest level: You need very good players who adjust to whatever their role is.

Now, last year, when Duke got down to eight because of two departures in December, there wasn't much talk about roles.

"The players all felt very important,'' Goestenkors said. "They knew we needed them all, and because of that they played with less fear of making mistakes. We really didn't have many options even if they were making them.

"This year, that will change. Everyone's minutes will go down, but we've stressed to be more productive with minutes you have. Because the flip side of the comfort of getting to play through mistakes is that there were times when they really needed to come out and re-focus.''

Goestenkors said Mosch and Matyasovsky will be vital to the team not just when they're on the floor, but when they're off, too. If they're always upbeat, everybody will follow the lead.

Mosch said having 12 players instead of eight is nice, but the overall feeling among the Devils isn't that much different from last season. The faith-in-team mindset that made them believe eight was enough then is the same that makes them now say a dozen is dandy.

Mosch, incidentally, says the baseball movie "A League of Their Own'' is her favorite flick. Baseball was the first sport she played, thus her first love. So which character in the movie is she most like?

"Well, you like Dottie, but she walks out on the team,'' Mosch said. "And you can't say Kit, because she's a crybaby. Marla gets married and runs away with her husband and leaves the team. And that makes me mad, too.''

But what she loves about the movie is the end, where all the old women are out playing ball. It's so touching, she says, seeing both their simple joy in running around the field and the camaraderie they still have.

Mosch knows she'll always feel that way about her fellow Blue Devils. And if they have a national championship memory to share, too? That would be a real Hollywood ending.

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached at mvoepel@kcstar.com.