Hamilton, Douglas spark Seminoles

ATLANTA — When Leonard Hamilton was having his pre-game handshake with Roy Williams prior to Saturday’s ACC Tournament semifinal, the Florida State coach told Williams that if they weren’t playing against one another that he’d be pulling for North Carolina because of his roots.
Instead, Hamilton may have been repudiated by his Gastonia, N.C., connections for preventing their beloved Tar Heels from reaching the ACC championship game for the third straight year.
Hamilton’s Seminoles, the surprise of the ACC all season long, crashed the party with a 73-70 stunner over top-seeded North Carolina. Reaching the finals for the first time in Florida State’s history (it has been an ACC member since 1991-92), has capped off one of the most unlikely runs in conference history and taken the FSU fans’ minds off the school’s second-favorite sport — spring football.
Picked in preseason polls to finish 10th in the league, all Hamilton did was lead the Seminoles to the fourth seed in the tournament and win Coach of the Year honors while riding scoring machine Toney Douglas to today’s championship game.
Had it not been for Duke’s deadeye Jon Scheyer (22 points) cutting Maryland’s zone defense to ribbons in the second half of Saturday’s other semifinal, we might have seen something as rare as Haley’s Comet: a non-Big Four title fight.
In 55 years of ACC championships, only once has there been two teams from outside the state of North Carolina playing for all the marbles — Virginia vs. Georgia Tech in 1990.
Instead, the Blue Devils will be playing in the finals for the 10th time in the past dozen years, a span in which they’ve taken seven trophies back to Durham.
While the rap on UNC’s Williams has been that he’s much more interested in winning the NCAA title than the ACC crown, he contradicted that notion after the loss, when he discussed getting an extra day’s rest for the Tar Heels due to the upset.
“[The extra day] is not going to help my sleep tonight or my attitude,” Williams said, second-guessing his late-game strategy against the Seminoles. “An extra day could help, but I’d rather win.”
Playing without their point guard and the conference’s player of the year, Ty Lawson, the Tar Heels clearly weren’t the same team that is more comfortable playing at warp speed than the halfcourt pace it had been forced into the
last two games. Carolina needed the help of some controversial calls in order to avoid an upset loss at the hands of Virginia Tech a day earlier.
“We couldn’t stop [Toney] Douglas,” Williams said after losing to FSU. “We went zone and tried to get the ball out of Toney’s hands a little bit, but they made some threes, so we got out of the zone.”
Douglas’ 27 points against the Tar Heels were the second-most ever scored by a Seminole in an ACC Tournament game.
Maryland had the same issues. The Terps went zone and Scheyer went wild, giving Duke a spot in today’s finals against a team that Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski has great respect for.
“To me, Leonard Hamilton was the national coach of the year,” Krzyzewski said. “Toney Douglas is as good a player as there is in the nation. You have to have an A+ game to beat them.”
Carolina was minus the weapons necessary to play A+ basketball. Duke has the necessary personnel, but not the size. Maryland featured no one of significance over 6-foot-7.
The Devils won’t have that luxury this afternoon, facing an FSU squad with plenty of bulk, such as 7-1 center Solomon Alabi, and
6-9 forwards Chris Singleton and Uche Echefu.
Upon noting that fact, Krzyzewski glanced over at 6-5 Scheyer and 6-6 David McClure and cracked, “Well, we’re not going to grow overnight ... you guys are welcome to do that.”
Coach K knows that there likely won’t be many layups available against the towering Seminoles today, which places a premium on accuracy from his gunners, Scheyer and Kyle Singler, who struggled with a 3 of 12 performance against the Terps. Also MIA was Gerald Henderson, who easily played his worst game in weeks with an eight-point output in 33 minutes.
Still, Duke’s game is defense and that’s what put the Devils in today’s spotlight. Krzyzewski noted that Maryland and star guard Greivis Vasquez had been on a mission in the tournament.
While Vasquez was good Saturday, he wasn’t great, which was Duke’s mission.
Watch out Toney Douglas, you’re a marked man today.
As good as the Seminoles have been, without another great performance by Douglas, they stand about as much chance of winning today as a one-legged man in a chin-kick contest.
They can get some contribution from the big guys, but without Douglas there isn’t a lot of points out there, unless Deividas Dulkys (whom some of the Tar Heel fans referred to as old Euro trash over in the corner) heats up. Dulkys, who unashamedly asked for No. 4 (the same digit that former Duke sharpshooter J.J. Redick wore), is proclaimed to be the ACC’s next great marksman.
He convinced Roy Williams of that Saturday when Williams ordered the zone and Dulkys quickly made the Tar Heels pay before they could get out of the defense.
Florida State may have discovered there’s more than one way to skin a cat and the Seminoles can play some pretty nasty defense as well.
So, if ol’ Leonard Hamilton walks up to Krzyzewski for a handshake before today’s game and says something like, “You know Mike, if we weren’t playing against you today, I’d be rooting for you,” then Coach K had better be leery.
The Seminoles will be on the warpath.