After a little over eight minutes of play Saturday afternoon in Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke held an 11-10 lead over Florida State, but their coach was not pleased. During the second media timeout, Mike Krzyzewski ripped off his jacket and then proceeded to rip into his team. The Blue Devils responded by outscoring the Seminoles 32-15 during the remainder of the half and maintained a double-figure lead throughout, winning 78-56. It was a milestone win for Krzyzewski, who joined Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim as the only coaches with 900 career wins at a single school.

Mike Krzyzewski Fires up Duke During  the First Half versus Florida State.
(AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Here’s what had Coach K so upset. Duke had executed the defensive game plan well early, forcing Florida State into seven turnovers before that second media timeout, but the Blue Devils had wasted that effort with otherwise casual play – four turnovers of their own, 3-of-16 shooting, and only two free throw attempts. Perhaps even more troubling was the four consecutive fast break opportunities that his team had allowed Florida State during that time. Duke was fortunate that the Seminoles only converted on two of those chances with Ian Miller missing a wide-open three and Robert Gilchrist misfiring on those two attempts from the line. From that point on, Duke was much more aggressive. Even though the Blue Devils struggled to make shots — as most teams do against the tall and athletic Seminoles — the Blue Devils found other ways to score. Duke dominated the boards, grabbing more offensive rebounds (27) than Florida State did in total (24), and repeatedly attacked the basket, shooting 43 free throws compared to 18 for the Seminoles. Duke also had a huge edge in bench points (42-11) but part of that was because Rodney Hood (18 points) was unable to start the game due to an interesting uniform issue that required him to borrow shorts from a teammate.

Here are some other takeaways for each team after Saturday afternoon’s game:

• Takeaways for Duke (15-4 , 5-2 ACC). Duke continues to look more like the team that we thought it would be back in the preseason, using its athleticism and depth to apply defensive pressure and attack the basket off the dribble. Despite not shooting well in their last two games, the Blue Devils are finding other ways to win big. Hood, Jabari Parker, and Rasheed Sulaimon combined to shoot a cool 8-of-34 from the field on Saturday, but they were able to get to the foul line frequently – making 25-of-28 attempts, by attacking the lane off the dribble, and in Parker’s case going to the offensive boards (he grabbed 10 for the game). Also encouraging was that Marshall Plumlee easily had the most productive game of his career, scoring seven points and grabbing seven offensive rebounds. A concern, however, has to be the cold shooting lately of Quinn Cook, who has only made 9-of-29 threes in the last five games. This upcoming week is huge as the Blue Devils hit the road against ACC newcomers and top dogs, Pittsburgh (Monday – 7:00 PM) and Syracuse (Saturday – 6:30 PM).
• Takeaways for Florida State (13-6 , 4-3 ACC). There are only two real weaknesses for Florida State, but they are what probably will keep the Seminoles from becoming an elite team instead of just a very good one. In seven conference games, the Seminoles have struggled with turnovers, committing 95 while forcing 71 on the other end. Even worse is their inability to control the defensive backboard. Florida State has allowed an alarming 107 offensive rebounds while collecting only 68 themselves. That works out to 63 more scoring opportunities for Seminoles’ opponents, an average of nine additional chances per game. That makes it hard to win, even for a team that shoots and defends extremely well. Duke was effective at defending the three-point line on Saturday, with Florida State only making 2-of-6 treys after coming into the game making over nine threes per game in their last four. If they can just clean up their weaknesses a bit, the Seminoles have an upcoming schedule that could allow them to go on a nice mid-season run. This week they travel to N.C. State (Wednesday 9:00 PM) and then host Clemson (Saturday – 3:00 PM).

Quotable:

• “Jabari has been incredible on the boards… sensational.” – Mike Krzyzewski, referring to the freshman’s rebounding prowess in the last two games, grabbing a total of 29 boards for the Blue Devils.
• “They [Duke] were much more aggressive. They attacked us off the bounce” – Leonard Hamilton discussing Duke’s large advantage from the foul line.
• “I’ve been blessed to be around great people. Great schools don’t always have great people. This school has [had great people during his time at Duke].” – Krzyzewski on his 900th win as the head coach at Duke.
• “It’s part of their philosophy to not allow open threes. They’re really good at it and we didn’t execute.” – Hamilton, on why Florida State struggled to score from behind the three-point arc.

Brad Jenkins (383 Posts)

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 26th, 2014 at 1:08 pm by Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: duke, florida state, Ian Miller, Jabari Parker, leonard hamilton, marshall plumlee, mike krzyzewski, quinn cook, rasheed sulaimon, rodney hood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.