FSU basketball: Noles beat themselves against Blue Devils

FSU basketball played one of its worst games in a losing effort against Duke. It was the Noles beating themselves more than anything.

No. 8 FSU basketball (20-4, 10-3 ACC) picked a terrible time to have an awful shooting game in their 70-65 loss against No. 7 Duke (21-3, 11-2 ACC).

The loss probably made FSU’s chances of winning the ACC regular season “evaporate” since Duke and Louisville have sole possession of first and second place now.

FSU played one of its worst first halves of the season against Duke and someone only managed to be down 33-32 at the half.

They took terrible shots, missed a ton of free throws and couldn’t make an open three-pointer for anything.

FSU had success when they took the ball to the basket, but again failed miserably at the free throw line when fouled. They missed eight free throws and lost by five points so its easy to do the math.

The refs did the Noles no favors down the stretch as their were a number of questionable calls that went uncalled or against the Noles.

FSU shot 38 percent overall and 3 of 18 from three-point land while Duke shot 45 percent overall and made 7 of 17 three pointers.

They also made 17 of 22 free throws. Those and the three-point shooting were the main differences in the game.

The Noles were led by Trent Forrest’s near triple-double where he had 18 points, 9 rebounds and 8 steals. Malik Osborne and Devin Vassell checked in with 14 and 11 points respectively.

Thoughts

The Noles need to regroup and look to finish the rest of their ACC schedule strong. They should be able to hold on to the third spot and lock up a No. 3 seed or so in the NCAA Tournament provided they don’t have any slip ups to lesser teams.

They’ll host Syracuse Saturday at 12 p.m. ET at the Tucker Center with the game airing on ESPN2.