Duke carries sting of loss to Maryland

Mason Plumlee tossed the basketball to the official waiting underneath the basket.

Otherwise, the only reaction Duke's players on the court had to Austin Rivers' dramatic layup with 4.9 seconds remaining in Saturday's game against Florida State was to shuffle quickly into defensive position.

After Seminoles guard Michael Snaer hit a 3-pointer in the remaining seconds to give FSU a 76-73 victory, though, the Blue Devils were less stoic. Rivers crumpled to the court while teammate Seth Curry put his hands on his head.

There's only so much you can extrapolate from such a frenetic finish, but those final 4.9 seconds of Saturday's game offer a hint as to why Duke's defense has been a step or two off at points this season.

Heading into Tuesday night, the No. 8 Blue Devils (16-3, 4-1 ACC) ranked second-to-last in the league in scoring defense (69.2 ppg) and last in field-goal percentage defense (44.1 percent). Tonight's road game at Maryland (9 p.m., ESPN) will feature a Duke opponent doing marginally better in both defensive categories: The Terrapins (12-6, 2-2) rank 10th and 11th, respectively, among ACC teams in scoring defense and field-goal percentage defense.

For the most part Saturday, Duke's players did what they were supposed to do in an end-of-game situation.

"In that kind of situation, you have to get back," Duke assistant coach Chris Collins said. "They have to try to drive the length of the court to score. The very important thing when you score is to retreat."

After Rivers made his drive, three Duke players - Rivers, Andre Dawkins and Ryan Kelly - sprinted back while two - Seth Curry and Plumlee - remained in the frontcourt to try to trap the Florida State ballhandler, which is what the Blue Devils wanted.

With neither team having a timeout, the Seminoles inbounded the ball to Luke Loucks, who took a step toward the Blue Devils bench to his right before changing course and accelerating left into the middle of the court.

It was the first moment when Duke didn't execute quite the way it would have liked.

Ideally, Curry would have forced Loucks toward the sideline, where Plumlee would have helped double-team Loucks near the Duke bench.

"There's a guy taking the ball out of bounds, so you can have two-on-one on the ball handler," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "We had that set up, and we didn't funnel him into the big. You should corral him at that three-quarter court. We had him down the sideline, and then Loucks beat it."

If Duke successfully corralled Loucks, he would have had to pass to a teammate or maneuver away from Plumlee and Curry, chewing up valuable seconds.

"Tenths of seconds are all important, and if you can get them to just hold up instead of getting that burst - he was able to get that burst because he beat that corral," Krzyzewski said.

From there, Curry was stopped by a screen set by Seminoles big man Bernard James. By that point, Loucks had crossed half-court, running with his head up in the middle of the court. Even though he had the space to attempt an uncontested 30-footer, Loucks fired a pass to Snaer, who was somewhere between the corner and wing in front of the Seminoles bench.

"I give him a lot of credit to make an extra pass," Collins said. "We kind of got frozen watching the ball."

Once Snaer caught the pass, the Blue Devils' other fatal flaw was apparent - Dawkins had drifted one step too far into the lane and away from Snaer. Dawkins tried to recover, quickly moving his feet to get out to contest Snaer's shot, but he couldn't close fast enough, and Snaer got a relatively unobstructed look at the basket.

Duke could've played defense perfectly on the sequence and Florida State still could've won with a tough shot, of course. But those two miscues were somewhat emblematic of what kind of season it's been for the Blue Devils defensively.

"We kind of had Loucks on the sidelines, but we let him slip away," Collins said. "And we had to stay connected to Snaer."