Miles Plumlee, the lone senior on this year’s team, was the only Blue Devil to enter Saturday’s game against Florida State knowing the feeling of losing at Cameron Indoor Stadium. After Michael Snaer knocked down a 3-pointer as time expired to give the Seminoles a 76-73 victory, the entire Duke team knows that same feeling.
Florida State rallied from a an eight-point deficit with fewer than 10 minutes remaining to snap the Blue Devils’ 45-game home win streak, one victory shy of the program record. Snaer’s buzzer beater came just after Austin Rivers hit an acrobatic layup with five seconds remaining to even the game at 73. But, on the ensuing possession, Luke Loucks weaved through midcourt to find Snaer wide-open in front of the Seminole bench, which went wild celebrating in the middle of the court when the shot swished through the bottom of the net.
“You hit a shot like [the layup] and you feel so good,” Rivers said. “I always said at the beginning of the year, I didn’t want to lose in Cameron. This is our house. [The loss] hurts even more.”
Duke began the game dominating play on the interior as Mason and Miles Plumlee combined for 13 rebounds in the first half, eight of which were on the offensive end. The ample opportunities gave the Blue Devils 13 second-chance points, while the Seminoles notched just two.
The grittiness resulted in Duke outrebounding Florida State 22-14 in the first period. The Blue Devils held a nine-point lead with time waning in the half, but Snaer hit a 3-pointer off the glass with just seconds remaining, foreshadowing his late-game heroics.
“We held them to 23 points until they banked in that shot,” head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “So, going in with a nine-point lead and the ball… I just thought it was a fight the whole way.”
Duke led 32-26 after the shot fell, paced by Rivers with 12 points. He was hot from distance, hitting 2-of-4 3-pointers in the first half. He had another 3-pointer negated when an official whistled the ball dead, claiming that after it ricocheted off the rim it hit off an above-the-backboard camera, meaning it was out-of-bounds.
The second half was played at a much different pace than the first, with both teams pushing the ball and different members of both squads finding ways to contribute.
After Ryan Kelly went 0-for-5 from the field in the game’s first 20 minutes, he came alive later ignited by a 3-pointer that gave Duke a 50-47 lead. He then stole the ball only minutes later, setting up a fast break slam, which he followed up with another long ball on the ensuing possession to give the team an eight-point lead with 9:53 to play.
Andre Dawkins also made noise in the second half, finishing the game with 14 points and crowd-wowing plays on both ends of the floor.
The battle on the interior, however, was slowly being won by the Seminoles, who outrebounded Duke 16-11 in the second half. After Miles grabbed eight boards in the first, he came up empty in the second, while Mason grabbed only one missed shot.
There were far fewer missed shots to rebound after the Seminoles shot 18-of-27 in the second half. The teams combined for 91 points in the final period, compared to just 58 in the first.
Much of the Seminoles’ success came on the interior, where 6-foot-11 center Xavier Gibson led the team with 16 points. The team notched a total of 32 points in the paint, 24 of which came in the game’s final 20 minutes.
“Defensively, I thought we started the second half a little bit lacking compared to the first,” Miles said. “They’re long and athletic.”
The Blue Devils led for the majority of the game, but the game swayed back and forth down the stretch as both teams spent considerable time at the foul line. With Duke down by two and 26 seconds remaining, Kelly earned a shot at the charity stripe to tie it up.
After hitting 14-of-14 free throws at Georgia Tech just a week ago, eight of which came in the game’s final 40 seconds, Kelly missed his first before nailing the second. Also in the final minute, two Florida State players—Loucks and Gibson—each made just 1-of-2, keeping the Blue Devils in the game.
Although Duke was able to stay close, Snaer’s dramatic 3-pointer ultimately negated Rivers’ game-tying bucket that seemed as if it would send the game to overtime.
Now, heading to a hostile environment in Maryland on Wednesday, the Blue Devils will have to find a way to win without the home crowd that had cheered them on to 45-consecutive wins.
“Cameron has a huge impact, obviously, the fans are awesome and get us going,” Miles said. “It’s a standard we’ve set in our program because we uphold that standard most of the time, we got a lot of confidence from that.”
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