The reigning champion has fallen.
Florida State stuck to its formula this season and it paid off with a trip to the finals of the ACC Tournament. The Seminoles took down three-time defending tournament champion Duke in the second semifinal of the day, winning 62-59 in dramatic fashion. Coach Leonard Hamilton now has the opportunity to win his first ACC Tournament title against North Carolina Sunday afternoon.
Magic is in the air for this Florida State team, the players can feel it. After Seth Curry’s final heave fell harmlessly to the court, Michael Snaer, the team’s leading scorer paced menacingly down the court, staring down press row and his fans.
His only thoughts at the time? “Oh yeah, oh yeah.”
That’s what knocking off a three-time champion feels like, I suppose.
Survive and advance: This was one of those games where the fanbases for both teams rose in protest at every whistle, coaches pulled officials to the side at every timeout and press row ultimately got pelted with enraged, “I hope you write about that,” one-liners. It was such a grind-it-out win for the Seminoles, but yet they still smiled all the same on the way to the locker room. Winning feels like winning.
Much like in the first game, the losing team’s fans muttered their grievances all the way into the Atlanta evening. But Florida State made the plays down the stretch—namely a big-boy shot from Luke Loucks—and there is little disagreement that the better team won the affair.
Every time you look up this team is making big plays in big moments. Will it ever end? Loucks' shot was just another in a growing collection of clutch shots to fall for the Seminoles and the players said they are starting to feel a bit of the magic that accompanies March Madness. Ian Miller had his moment against Virginia. Snaer left Duke heartbroken last time. This time, Loucks buried them.
Your move, Deividas Dulkys.
And there’s simply no time to go into the ramifications of Seth Curry’s potential half-court buzzer beater that barely bounced wide. We’ll even overlook the fact that he took 14 steps without dribbling to shoot it.
Florida State has one of the better collection of all-around wings in the Atlantic Coast Conference, maybe the country. Leonard Hamilton’s players attack the opposition: they attack the passing lanes, they attack off the dribble. They even attack your attention span.
The overall talent is not equal to a Kentucky or Syracuse, but these guys fit a prototype for wing players—think VCU last season—that lends itself to success in tournament settings. If they fall into a shooting slump, they can still get it done on the other end of the floor.
Duke could use a couple more of them.
Wait, who is checking in?: Duke’s lineups in this game were astounding. For instance, in a three-point game, with around six minutes remaining, Duke’s lineup was as follows: Seth Curry, Austin Rivers, Tyler Thornton, Miles Plumlee and Josh Hairston. If that sounds bad, it’s because it should. There’s very little firepower there outside of Rivers and Curry. And it happened multiple times.
Mason Plumlee was on the bench (foul trouble). Ryan Kelly was on the sideline (injury). Andre Dawkins could not hit a shot all game. The collective talent coach Mike Krzyzewski has to juggle is not very lenient to foul trouble and staters’ injuries—and yet the team would have gone to overtime if Curry’s shot was only a fraction of an inch to the right.
Pretty remarkable. Say this about Duke: This team battles.
Lockdown: Say what you will about Duke’s overall talent offensively, this team has found ways to put the ball in the basket all season (6th-most efficient offense in the country). That being said, this Florida State team looks dangerous flying into passing lanes and disrupting offenses. Duke made some incredible individual plays (namely Curry’s and Rivers’ scoring abilities) to counteract that effort, but the Seminoles do not make it easy to score as a team.
Duke, rather remarkably, only committed 16 turnovers in the game despite the lengths the Seminoles made them go to complete every single pass. It felt like more. If an officiating crew in the NCAA Tournament lets this team play as physical as it wants to, good luck scoring.
This also applies to the North Carolina Tar Heels, the Seminoles’ opponent in tomorrow’s finale. There’s a sense that this tournament means a lot more to this senior-laden group than it does to the Tar Heels—but revenge will play a factor. This North Carolina team was embarrassed in Tallahassee, Fla., and never got a shot to redeem itself.
Well, Kendall Marshall and company got what it wanted. We’ll find out tomorrow if they should have wished for something else.
