DUKE 70, FSU 65: An opportunity to impress NCAA watchers falls short.
By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published March 1, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - It seemingly was right in front of the Florida State Seminoles on Sunday night - the kind of performance that would all but ensure their first NCAA Tournament bid since the 1997-98 season.
But also in front of them were the No. 5-ranked Duke Blue Devils and Chris Duhon.
Oh, well.
Duhon not only chased and harassed FSU leading scorer Tim Pickett, but the senior point guard scored six of his 12 points in the final 1:59 to lead his team to a 70-65 win before a boisterous sold-out crowd of 12,100 at the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center.
"We've talked about "must-wins' and "backs-against-the-wall,' " FSU coach Leonard Hamilton said. "Obviously, we have one more game left against another nationally ranked team and if you want to use that term, that's where we are."
The Seminoles (18-11, 6-9 ACC) end the regular season against No. 18 Georgia Tech on Saturday. But that's in Atlanta and the Seminoles have lost 23 straight conference road games.
Another loss might force them to reach the ACC tournament finale to get off the bubble and into the 65-team NCAA field.
Oh, well.
"The season's not over," Pickett said. "We've got another challenge to step to."
But given their 15-1 home record entering the game and an emotionally charged senior class playing in its Tallahassee swan song, the Seminoles seemed poised to make that big step Sunday. They also had recent history on their side.
The Seminoles had upset the Blue Devils in each of the past two meetings here, 77-76 on Jan. 6, 2002, and 75-70 on Feb. 2, 2003. Both were on Sunday nights, too.
And a three-peat didn't seem improbable when senior point guard Nate Johnson hit a driving layup to cut the Duke lead, as high as eight in each half, to 56-53 with 4:23 left.
Johnson was fouled on the play, but missed the free throw. Still, the Seminoles seemingly just needed a couple of plays, a couple of breaks to pull the game out.
They got the latter when Duke sophomore J.J. Redick, who had made 110 of 113 free throws, missed a one-and-one with 3:25 left. Duke forward Shelden Williams, however, grabbed the rebound and drew a foul from center Alexander Johnson.
"The little mistakes catch up with us in the end and that was one of them," Pickett said.
Williams made both free throws. In all, the Blue Devils (24-3, 12-3) made their final 12 from the line. Their only field goal in the final minutes came from Duhon, a driving layup with 44 seconds left that pushed the lead to 64-58.
"He's been in a lot of situations like that," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "He used that experience to the ultimate tonight."
Duhon hit a 3-pointer with 36.4 seconds left to enable the Blue Devils to win the first meeting in Durham, 56-49 on Jan. 29.
Even had he not scored as much, Duhon was the differencemaker with his defense. Pickett scored a game-high 24 but needed 21 shots to do it.
"Pickett was ready to have a 40-point night," Krzyzewski said. "I thought Chris did a pretty good job on him. If he weren't doing that, Pickett tonight would have taken the game over by himself. He almost did anyway."
"He was trying to be the hero of the team and in trying to do that sometimes you take bad shots and force up shots," Duhon said.
Were it not for a 3-pointer at the buzzer, Pickett would have failed to score in the final 10 minutes. Without him, the Seminoles struggled to score against the Blue Devils.
Duke made 6 of 25 3-pointers. Redick, the ACC's best from behind the arc (43.9 percent), was 1-for-8, and guard Daniel Ewing, the league's third best (41.2 percent), was 1-for-9.
"The difference in the game was they made a few more plays; they made some big plays," Hamilton said.
With just a few seconds left and forward Luol Deng hitting two free throws for a 70-62 lead, the Seminole fans began chanting appreciatively, "FSU, FSU."
"Florida State played winning basketball," Krzyzewski said. "They have to be given credit for that.
"I think they should definitely be an NCAA Tournament team."
