Well, that was fun. Duke may not play in a more hostile environment this season than Florida State’s Donald L. Tucker Center, After dominating the early going, Zion Williamson went down for the count with an eye injury, depleting not only Duke’s talent-base but also further enhancing 13th-ranked FSU’s deep bench. Basically, Duke played six players in the second half. If adversity makes you better, Duke got a lot better Saturday afternoon. A high-pressure, physical slug-fest that could easily could have slipped away more times than we can count. But it was the young, iron-man visitors that were standing after 40 minutes, 80-78 victors. And it was Cam Reddish who hit the game-winner, the final 3 of his 23 points, a clutch, slump-busting performance “We just got to be a part of an amazing basketball game,” Mike Krzyzewski said. “Both teams played so darn hard, the crowd was unbelievable. I mean, we were fortunate to win, and therefore it is a great win.”. We’ll never know how this game would have turned out had Williamson not been injured. He had 11 points and eight rebounds in 17 minutes. With Williamson, Reddish and R.J. Barrett all hitting for the first time in awhile, Duke flirted with gaining a significant first-half lead. A Barrett 3-pointer put Duke up 25-16, a Reddish layup 29-19, a Tre Jones layup 36-29. But Duke’s offense got stuck in neutral, two points in the final 3:40, while FSU took a 39-38 lead into the locker room on a P.J. Savoy bomb. The Seminoles closed the first half on an 8-0 run, the kind of late-half blow Duke often delivers but rarely receives. Duke was up 38-33 when Williamson went down and out. Williamson came back out for the second half but took a seat on the bench and became a cheer-leader. Krzyzewski said that Williamson had double vision but added that his freshman phenom did not have any headaches and hoped he would be ready Monday night. Williamson’s absence was obvious in the second half. It was FSU that was grabbing the rebounds, blocking the shots, attacking inside. The Seminole lob became lethal. Chris Koumadje, looking every inch of 7’4,” slammed it home twice in the early part of the second half. Duke led by three a couple of times early in the second half but another FSU run, 10-0 this time, gave them a 55-50 lead, with 13 minutes left. FSU could never build on that five-point lead, as Barrett and Reddish kept answering for Duke. “I’m proud of our team, our young team,” Krzyzewski said. “They fought that whole second half. RJ and Cam made big plays. I thought finally we stopped letting them dunk on us. We started switching and that helped, and then we came up with a couple of big defensive rebounds.” The teams traded baskets down the stretch, neither team leading by more than three points over the final 10:21. With Williamson out, Duke went to Barrett and Reddish, Reddish and Barrett, over and over, with Tre Jones directing the show with typical aplomb. Javin DeLaurier, Marques Bolden and Jack White combined for six points, in 65 minutes. FSU answered with a spectacular bench performance from Mfiondu Kabengele, 24 points in 25 minutes, including an 8-for-9 performance from the foul line. He added a game-high 10 rebounds. And don’t get me started on veteran forward Phil Cofer, who hit five treys on the way to a 21-point performance. Cofer scored 28 against Duke last season. If he could play against Duke all the time, he would be an All-American. The final minutes? Tense doesn’t begin to describe it. Tre Jones fumbled a defensive rebound out of bounds and later missed the first end of a one-and-one. FSU drew a shooting foul with a second left on the shot clock. Reddish with another out-of-bounds fumble and then fouling the 3-point shooter. Like I said, tense doesn’t begin to describe it. But Duke got the final break, Barrett missing a free thrown that would have tied the game but FSU losing the rebound out of bounds, the original call correctly over-tuned in Duke’s favor after a lengthy review. Three seconds left. Duke came out of the timeout, took a look at FSU’s defense and called another timeout. Krzyzewski’s perspective? “I’m looking and changing things. They’re three different things we were going to do after each. One before the time-out, one after and then one after that.” Barrett says Reddish was the primary option. “They came out with something, so we changed the play to get a better opportunity. Coach said that they were going to watch me and that Cam would be wide open.” Leonard Hamilton said “I didn’t expect them to get the ball at the elbow. I thought we had that covered. I expected them to get the ball inbounds but not a direct pass out of bounds to a guy at the elbow. They did a very good job of creating some misdirection.” Hamilton ended up with three guys guarding the lane, a fourth guarding the in-bounds pass and the fifth guarding Barrett in the corner. Which left Reddish wide open for the dagger. Nothing but net. “In the second [half] we wanted to get him the ball,’ Krzyzewski said of Reddish. “I think they kind of fixated on RJ and made it possible for him to get open; then he knocked it down.”. “I was working really hard to get back to who I was, trusting God praying every day and just trying to be who I was,” Reddish added. “That was a big shot for me and my teammates and coaches helped me with my confidence.” Duke leaves Tallahassee battered and bruised but 3-0 in the ACC, 14-1 overall, two days until Syracuse comes to town, Williamson’s status for that game uncertain. But for right now, a huge win for a young team with so much more room to grow and a huge game to grow on. “We made one more play than they did,” Krzyzewski summed up. “Ultimate respect for Leonard and his kids. I think we earned it and if they would’ve won, they would have earned it. So, it’s not a game somebody lost, it’s a game that somebody won.” NOTES Barrett ended with 32 points, his most since he scored 33 in the season-opener against Kentucky. Reddish had 23, his fourth 20-plus game of the season and first since he scored 23 against Stetson, back on December 1. And the duo was lights out from beyond the arc, Reddish 5-for-8, Barrett 4-for-7. The rest of the team went 2-for-9 on threes. Tre Jones was only 4-for-13 from the field but had six assists, five rebounds, three steals and only one turnover. Florida State out-rebounded Duke 39-34, blocked seven shots to Duke’s three and shot nine more foul shots than Duke. And still lost. Unlike 2002, 2006 and 2011, Duke came back from Florida State with its No. 1 ranking intact. Duke is 16-7 at FSU, 39-10 overall against the Seminoles and 234-36 as the top-ranked team in the AP poll.<doc-sep>Seminole heartbreak: Florida State loses to Duke with less than one second remaining. Florida State trailed Duke with less than two minutes left in the game, 76-74. The lead had changed thirteen total times and with a minute and a half left in the game, the ’Noles had tied it up at 76 after Mifondu Kabengele made both of his free throws. With 15 seconds left in the game, the ’Noles took a 2-point lead after PJ Savoy made 2 out of 3 from the charity stripe. After Duke’s RJ Barrett missed one of his free throws to tie the game, the ball bounced out off of Florida State and it became the Blue Devils’ ball. The Blue Devils’ Cam Reddish then sunk an uncontested triple from outside the arc, giving Duke the lead and eventually the game winning score, 80-78. On a positive note, even though the Seminoles turned over the ball eleven times in the first half and struggled to rebound the ball at times on both sides, the Seminoles made changes in the second half that seemed to rectify these two problems, finishing with 17 turnovers and with a 39-34 rebounding edge. Florida State had the lead as it entered the second half after PJ Savoy nailed a three and gave the Seminoles the lead, 39-38. Phil Cofer finally looked as if he was close to getting back into basketball shape. With 12 minutes left in contention, Cofer was 5 of 7 from distance and 7 of 9 overall. Cofer ended up with 21 total points and 7 assists. Duke’s Zion Williamson did not return to the game after getting poked in the eye by Trent Forrest near the end of the first half. With a little over 10 minutes left, Florida State’s Trent Forrest also went down when both him and Mifondu Kabengele went up to dunk the ball at the same time, but Forrest eventually checked back into the game. Kabengele lead the team with 24 points and had the third double-double of his career. The Seminoles hit the road and will head to Pittsburg on Monday to face the Panthers. Tip-off is at 7:00 pm.<doc-sep>Florida State was 2.8 seconds away from taking down No. 1 Duke in front of a raucous home crowd – but a clutch game-winner from freshman Cam Reddish saved the Blue Devils on Saturday in Tallahassee. Duke was without superstar Zion Williamson for the entirety the second half, as he left the game in the first half after being poked in the eye on a drive. Fellow freshmen RJ Barrett and Cam Reddish stepped up to keep Duke int he game, but a late Reddish error gave Florida State a golden chance at a signature win. With just 15 seconds left in a tie game and one second remaining on the shot clock, Reddish fouled Florida State’s PJ Savoy on an attempted three to give Savoy three foul shots. Savoy missed the first, but made the next two to put the Seminoles up 78-76. On the other end, RJ Barrett drew a foul with five seconds left – but missed his second free throw. A scramble for the rebound ended with a Florida State player trying to throw the ball off an opponent under the bucket, but officials ruled that the ball came off Florida State after a lengthy review. With 2.8 seconds remaining, Duke drew up a brilliant play for Reddish, who drained a wide-open catch-and-shoot three to give Duke the win. Coach K had Barrett flash to the ball to draw the attention of defenders, while two other Duke players crashed the lane. Reddish, with no one paying attention to him, ran across the court to the wing, and Tre Jones made a perfect pass around 7-foot-4 center Christ Koumadje. The play that won it all. Watch MJ Walker move to the corner with RJ Barrett. Barrett was the decoy. Good play call. @WCTV #FSU #Duke pic.twitter.com/JrawFkFRot — Michael Hudak (@WCTVHudak) January 12, 2019 Officials put tenths of a second back on the clock, but a long Florida State pass was tipped away to seal the game.<doc-sep>
Cam Reddish provided the most dramatic moment of Duke's season so far with an oh-my-god-so-wide-open 3-pointer just before time expired to give top-ranked Duke an 80-78 victory at No. 13 Florida State on Saturday. Reddish, who has been bogged down by uneven play much of the past month, might have course-corrected his college career with arguably the biggest 3-pointer of his life to this point. A blown defensive assignment left -- the Seminoles were no doubt keyed in on star wing RJ Barrett, in addition to Marques Bolden moving toward the rim -- left Reddish as open as you'll see any player for a winning shot attempt this season. Beautiful set drawn up here by Duke ... and a nightmare lapse by the Noles. Reddish finished with 23 points. His roaring winner becomes the headline and steals away what might have been some short-term concern for the No. 1 team in the country. The sequence leading up to it was unpredictable as well. Florida State took a 78-76 lead after Reddish committed a turnover, then fouled FSU's P.J. Savoy on a 3-point attempt with 15.8 seconds left. Savoy hit two of his three free throws. Barrett proceeded to make one of two fouls shots, missing the second, and as FSU tried to get the offensive rebound, the ball instead was ricocheted off the Seminoles. It was only because of that that Duke had its chance to find Reddish for the winner. As you'll see above, Duke star freshman Zion Williamson was not on the floor for the game's final play. He didn't play at all in the second half, in fact. Williamson was sidelined due to an eye injury he suffered with 1:26 remaining in the first half. Williamson left the game with 11 points and eight rebounds. FSU went on a 19-10 run from the end of the first half and into the second without Williamson on the floor, but that will be lost amid the dramatic finish. Mike Krzyzewski said postgame that Williamson was having double-division issues in his left eye, which prohibited him from playing. But he is expected to be fine in time for Duke's home game Monday against Syracuse. Ironically, it's the second straight season a standout Duke freshman has left a game due to an eye injury; Marvin Bagley III suffered the same fate at the start of his 2017-18 season.