No moral victories
Plenty of positives for Seminoles after buzzer beater by No. 1 Duke
TALLAHASSEE — After a crushing 80-78 loss Saturday to No. 1 Duke on a last-second shot, Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton didn’t want to get caught in talk about moral victories.
“Obviously they were extremely disappointed. And that’s positive, because they care about winning,” Hamilton said of his players’ reaction to losing a thrilling game during which the two teams often traded leads. “… I think we’re growing and maturing in some of those areas. We’ve got to make sure we bounce back. We don’t want to take any moral victories away. We had a chance and we got beat by a team that played a little better than we did.”
Still, there were a lot of positives the No. 13 Seminoles (13-3, 1-2 ACC) could take away from the contest. Mfiondu Kabengele was aggressive and finished with a team-high 24 points and 10 rebounds. Phil Cofer looked closer to his pre-injury form, finishing with 21 points, including five 3-pointers.
The Seminoles have had different players step up this season, and Kabengele said his mindset entering the Duke game allowed him to produce.
“I prepared pretty well Chiefs linebacker Ben Niemann celebrates a missed field goal by Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri.
throughout the season. I stay in the gym; I watched a lot of film on Duke. They’re a talented team,” he said. “I believe I had the right mindset and my goal going into every game is to just bring energy and whatever happens, happens. I believe I brought that today and my teammates fed off it and we just couldn’t execute down the stretch. But I’m happy with the energy that we brought.”
FSU remained poised down the stretch, responding to a 10-0 Duke run in the second half, taking a late lead and overall making things difficult for the Blue Devils (14-1, 3-0) — with the exception of the final shot.
Miscommunication allowed Cam Reddish to take a wide-open 3-pointer to win the game as time clicked away.
“They hit a back screen, a couple of our guys shifted and Cam came from the corner and hit a good shot,” Kabengele said.
Hamilton said he wasn’t expecting the final play to be that easy for Duke.
“I didn’t expect them to get the ball at the elbow. I thought we had that covered,” Hamilton said. “I expected them to get it inbounds, but not a direct pass out of bounds to a guy at the elbow. They did a great job of creating some misdirection. We’ve got to go back and look at film and see how he delivered that pass right on the money.”
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said having one of his four starting freshmen step up with the game on the line is big for the team moving forward.
“He played aggressively the whole game and the last thing we wanted was him to get the ball,” Krzyzewski said of Reddish. “I think they were kind of fixated on RJ [Barrett, who had 32 points] and it allowed him to get open and then he knocked it down. And he was fighting cramps at least half the second half. Huge game for him, and it’s a story whenever a kid hits a game-winner like that. It’s storybook.”
The Blue Devils also got by without star Zion Williamson, who sat out the entire second half after being poked in the eye right before halftime. Krzyzewski said Williamson had been experiencing double vision and when it didn’t improve, he opted to sit the star the remainder of the game.
It left a huge void on the glass after Williamson earned five offensive rebounds in the first half. FSU out-rebounded Duke 17-14 in the second half, but scoring droughts throughout prevented the Seminoles from capitalizing.
The ’Noles don’t have much time to dwell on the loss as they head to Pittsburgh Monday to take on the 11-5 Panthers.
“It hurt all of us, just because we were there the whole time,” Cofer said about the loss. “It happened, we miscommunicated on defense and we have to move on.”