ATLANTA – For all the breakthroughs Florida State had this year, there’s one thing that still generally belongs to teams like Duke and North Carolina: the championship in the ACC Tournament. This time around, it’s Duke, winning its ninth ACC Tournament title in the last 12 years with a convincing 79-69 win over Florida State that wasn’t as close as the final margin would suggest.
“We lost to a team today that came out extremely hot, on fire,” said Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton.
That wasn’t quite true – the Blue Devils shot just 38 percent in the first half while the Seminoles struggled to less than 22 percent – but the gist of his comment was. The Blue Devils simply dominated the Seminoles in this one.
In fact, if all you had was a box score of this game, you surely wouldn’t come away with an accurate impression of this game. Florida State had a better shooting percentage, including from long range, and was out-rebounded by just one. Free throws didn’t tell the story of this game by a long shot, although you might notice that the Blue Devils made as many as the Seminoles attempted (19). The turnover stat will jump out at you, as the Blue Devils turned it over just four times while Florida State committed 13. But three of those four came in the second half, and the Seminoles’ miscues were pretty evenly distributed, and the Blue Devils turned those 13 turnovers into just 11 points.
The game was tight early on, with teams trading baskets until Duke went on a game-changing 14-0 run to go up 23-11. Jon Scheyer and Gerald Henderson keyed the big runs with one shot after another from long range, and along with Kyle Singler their big three once again led the way. The Blue Devils shut down Toney Douglas early, then Nolan Smith had what might have been an early exclamation point when he drove from the three-point line on the left wing for a one-handed dunk that brought the Duke faithful to their feet.
Douglas came to life early in the second half in trying to will his team back into the game, but the Seminoles didn’t help him. First, they couldn’t get a stop defensively to try to cut into the lead, then they committed a cardinal sin against the Blue Devils by giving them extra possessions via offensive rebounds. No sooner had the Seminoles made it a six-point game at 42-36 than the Blue Devils broke it open again, leading at one point by 22. And although the Seminoles had a late run, the Blue Devils weren’t in any danger.
For all the things Florida State did this year that they had not before, one thing they didn’t was solve Duke. The Blue Devils have now won nine of the last 11 meetings between the two, including all three this year.
You could see during the tournament that Duke has really found itself. The new starting lineup, which came about after the Blue Devils lost at Boston College in mid-February, has clearly made a difference. The roles seem more clearly defined throughout the team, with the big three getting a lot of defensive support from Elliot Williams, Lance Thomas and David McClure. On Sunday, Brian Zoubek also helped neutralize the length the Seminoles have in the frontcourt.
There’s been a perception that the ACC is Duke, North Carolina and everyone else. They have won 34 of 56 conference tournament titles, so there’s some factual basis to it. To a degree, there is some thought that times are changing and that there’s more to it than just those two schools in basketball, although the conference tournament isn’t an indicator since they have won all but one of the last 13 (Maryland won in 2004). But as much as Clemson tried last year and Florida State this year, the two signature schools still reigned supreme. And after Sunday’s game, during the current 12-year stretch, it’s still the Blue Devils who reign supreme in the ACC Tournament.
