Florida State won a rugged battle with Duke Tuesday night, prevailing 88-72.
There’s no shame in saying that the better team won. FSU deserved to win, clearly. Leonard Hamilton has put together a terrific team and it could be FSU’s best since the Hugh Durham era. As you may know, Durham led FSU to the Final Four and the NCAA championship game in 1972. He also discovered Dave Cowens - not a bad claim to fame.
Duke made a lot of mistakes in this game but the bottom line is this: despite losing, despite competing without Coach K and Amile Jefferson, this was miles from what happened at Virginia Tech.