(Editor's note: Duke junior guard Sheana Mosch, the Blue Devils' co-captain, will share a diary with ESPN.com throughout the season.)

Feb. 6, 2002

Baseball really was my first love, but when I started playing organized basketball at the YMCA in fourth grade, my heart made the immediate switch.

	Sheana Mosch has helped lead Duke to its second Final Four appearance.

I loved sports so much I knew I was going to play something when I got older, and besides the fact that I simply enjoyed basketball more, I knew there was no future for myself in baseball. So I began thinking about college and maybe playing overseas (there was definitely no WNBA back then!).

I played all the time when I was growing up and didn't really have much of a social life until about 11th grade (yeah, I was a loser). Before then, my idea of a date was taking my basketball to the movies. My favorite thing in the world was dribbling, and it was the summer before eighth grade when my dad showed me my first tape of Pete Maravich. It was an instructional shooting video, and to tell you the truth, I wasn't all that excited about watching it (I already knew how to shoot, of course!).

Well, I watched it and the thing that blew my mind was the end of the video when he started shooting all these crazy shots -- behind his back, throwing it through his legs, off his head, etc. I had never seen that before and thought he was the coolest guy for being able to do that tricky stuff. So within two weeks, I had every video ever made with Pete Maravich. I watched them day after day and was determined with all my heart to be able to do every single trick he could do and every ball-handling drill as fast as him.

Anytime I saw something new, I would excitingly run outside and work at it until I got it right -- which would at times take until 2 in the morning. I can't even count how many times the cops would pull in my driveway and inform me the neighbors were complaining about the lights. So I just turned them off and kept dribbling.

When Pete was in eighth grade, some of his friends bet him $5 that he couldn't spin the ball on his finger for an hour straight. Well, he did it using every finger on each hand, which messed them up pretty badly. So he got the five bucks but ended up having to pay $10 to fix his fingers.

Anytime I saw something new, I would excitingly run outside and work at it until I got it right -- which would at times take until 2 in the morning. I can't even count how many times the cops would pull in my driveway and inform me the neighbors were complaining about the lights. So I just turned them off and kept dribbling.

So naturally, I had to learn how to spin the ball, too. I've only tried once or twice, though, to see how long I could spin it. The longest I got was a half hour one night while I was watching television -- I guess I'm just too impatient for that.

I used to do ball-handling drills in every room of my house: the bathroom, basement and kitchen. My poor mom, I've broken so many dishes in our kitchen from the basketball going all over the place (love you, mommy!). I used to try anything to get better at dribbling the ball. I'd dribble in the dark, with a blindfold over my eyes, on my bike, out the car window, or up the stairs.

Sometimes I'd take my ball for a walk downtown and dribble it across the bridge -- this used to make me really nervous cuz I was afraid I would mess up and it would bounce out in front of a car. I thought this would make me a better dribbler under pressure (I was such a dork!).

So obviously I tried everything. I even slept with my ball just so I would never lose the feeling of it. I used to practice drills so much that eventually I would get bored with them. So I always tried to make them harder by adding another ball, doing it backwards, with my eyes closed, running instead of walking, etc. Any trick in the world that I saw, I had to try.

The greatest satisfaction that I still get out of it is knowing that I can do things that not many other people can do. I'll still go into Cameron late at night and won't even put the hoops down or turn the lights on, but just dribble the ball.

Growing up I always had a secret ambition of making my own ball-handling tape -- of just the drills that I've made up. Who knows, maybe I'll get around to it someday when I'm finished playing!

For more information on Mosch and the Blue Devils, check out Duke's official athletic site.