{"id":189831,"date":"2026-03-13T06:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T06:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/189831\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T06:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T06:58:08","slug":"duke-survives-a-tough-game-from-florida-state-80-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/189831\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke Survives A Tough Game From Florida State, 80-79"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/a>ell, that was bracing, wasn\u2019t it? Missing 40% of its starting lineup without Patrick Ngongba and Caleb Foster, both sidelined with foot injuries, Duke took down Florida State, arguably the hottest team in the ACC, 80-79, when Robert McCray missed a three-point attempt at the buzzer.<\/p>\n

As expected, it was a tough game. Duke has been a great defensive team down the stretch. Not good – great. The defense was okay in spots, especially the second-half burst that put Duke in position to win, but from wire to wire, it wasn\u2019t what it has been.<\/p>\n

Duke hasn\u2019t given up 70+ points since losing to UNC on February 7th.<\/p>\n

The game was nearly dead-even at the half, with FSU up 44-43 on a McCray shot. Duke might have been in real trouble, but Isaiah Evans had a first half that JJ Redick would have been proud of, scoring 22 points on 7-11\/5-9 from the floor. Cameron Boozer had 11 points, and in a bit of a surprise, Nik Khamenia had 7.<\/p>\n

The Blue Devils coughed up the ball 8 times in the first half, which was disappointing, and Duke had foul trouble where they least needed it, with point guard Cayden Boozer picking up two early fouls, and so only played nine minutes in the first half.<\/p>\n

He would pick up his third foul 17:46 into the second half. We were curious how Scheyer would handle Boozer foul trouble, but it was pretty easy: he just had Boozer play point guard.<\/p>\n

Meaning Cameron Boozer, of course.<\/p>\n

For much of the second half, the taller Boozer slid over to point and brought the ball up the court.<\/p>\n

This game stayed close for most of the second half until Duke put together a 19-2 run when they were down by 8. A lot of that was fueled by Maliq Brown, who had two big steals in that stretch.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Boozer, the guard, that is, he had some struggles in this game, but as we\u2019ve said before, both Boozers understand winning time, and Cayden had two huge plays as the game evolved: first, he had a three-point play that put Duke up 70-61, and second, he hit a follow-up basket after Evans missed a three-point attempt. Florida State had cut the lead to 78-77 with 1:01 left, so the basket was absolutely huge.<\/p>\n

Clearly, Duke missed Ngongba and Foster, and winning the ACC will be a tall order without them. But it\u2019s also clear that this team has a strong desire to win. Now it\u2019s on to face the winner of Clemson-UNC.<\/p>\n

Notes – Evans finished with a career-high 32 and showed a maturity to his game that was really impressive\u2026Cameron Boozer finished with 23 points, 10 rebounds, and 4 assists\u2026and, unfortunately, 5 turnovers\u2026Duke won the boards, 46-25 and 22-6 on the offensive end\u2026Khamenia really played well, especially in the first half\u2026McCray finished with 25 and Lajae Jones had 28\u2026we can\u2019t think of a team that improved more in conference play than Florida State\u2026it\u2019s really quite dramatic\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, that was bracing, wasn\u2019t it? Missing 40% of its starting lineup without Patrick Ngongba and Caleb Foster,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4028,28,30,29,5231],"class_list":["post-189831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-acc","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}