What Florida State brings to the table in the ACC is a very long and athletic team. They are by no means an offensive juggernaut but they generally make up for that lack of flash with extra opportunities from offensive rebounds, and a stingy defense.
First and foremost this team is relentless on the boards, Duke did not help the rebounding situation any by continually not boxing out and putting bodies on the State big men. Duke lost the rebounding battle 38-29 but it didn’t even seen that close. But as good as FL State was on the boards they were just that bad at holding on to the ball, they coughed the ball up to Duke 22 times. The other telling stats were the three ball and free throws, Duke had twice as many makes in both categories.
What Duke did well in spurts is defend. Lance Thomas put together quite a game of intangibles and things that do not show up in stat sheets, loose balls, being aware and alert on the defensive end, deflections. Lance was all over the floor. He also had 6 rebounds, 2 blocks, 2 steals and an assist.
As for the big 3 Jon Scheyer seems to have shot himself out of his slump as of late going 7 for 12 and 4 of 6 on 3 pointers for 22 points. Jon was the most efficient of the big 3 tonight with Kyle Singler a close second adding 20 points and shooting just under 50%. Nolan Smith only had 11 in this game but it was a strong 11 points. Nolan has been carving up defenses all year and his drives to the basket and penchant for creating shots where there seemingly are none helped Duke tremendously in this game as it has all year.
It was good to see Andre Dawkins knock down a three in this game, hopefully that will lead to him getting his swagger back and getting into the swing of things.
