January 10, 2009

Chris Nee
Warchant.com

FSU-Duke Highlights

TALLAHASSEE - Florida State's shooting woes and a career-high 25 points from Gerald Henderson denied the Seminoles an Atlantic Coast Conference-opening victory against No. 2 Duke Saturday.

Toney Douglas led the Seminoles (13-3, 0-1) with 18 points, but his 7-of-23 shooting performance - before fouling out with less than a minute to play - underscored the offensive struggles in a 66-58 loss.

The Seminoles shot only 31 percent (22-of-71) from the floor and missed 14 of 17 3-point attempts. The Blue Devils outscored the 'Noles 25-11 from the free throw line, aided by a 39-14 disparity in attempts. FSU did manage a 43-34 rebounding advantage.

"We went in to the game to knowing that we had to execute extremely well offensively," FSU coach Leonard Hamilton said. "We knew we had to compete with them on the boards, and one of our goals was to get to the free throw line which allows the number of attempts we needed to have. I thought we competed well on the boards. Obviously, we didn't get to the free throw line, and I think a lot of it was execution offensively. Even though the game was kind of nip and tuck in the first half, we never got into the kind of offensive rhythm that we planned to get into."

Hamilton's club trailed 19-14 at the half after scoring only four points in the final 13:07, which included a scoreless stretch of 7:58. Henderson had 14 of Duke's 19 points going into the locker room.

"We just talked about needing to play together as one on both ends of the court," Douglas said. "We brought the effort defensively in the first half but had a lot of bad offensive possessions. We had open shots at times but we didn't knock them down. We just can't afford to do that against good teams."

Things did not improve in the second half for FSU as Duke (14-1, 2-0) ran off the first nine points of the second half, extending a 41-11 run. The Blue Devils built their largest lead - 46-21 - with 12:45 remaining. Henderson keyed the early surge with an alley-oop dunk and later added a 3-pointer.

"We tried to go to a couple of things that would clear a side," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "We got that dunk so we brought everybody on one side of the court, and it worked. Sometimes it doesn't work. We went to a little bit of a trap and I think it caught them a little off guard and we got a couple of turnovers out of it. You do that for a long time they are going to kill you, but it worked for a little bit and we got some free buckets."

Florida State was able to chip away at the lead, partly due to a 7:14 stretch where Duke went without a bucket, but never got closer than six points.

While the Seminoles struggled offensively, they did force 17 turnovers and limit Duke to 18-of-42 shooting.

Along with Douglas, Derwin Kitchen scored 16 points and Uche Echefu contributed 10.

Next up for the Seminoles is a road tilt at N.C. State on Tuesday evening at 7 p.m.

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