By Bret Strelow
bstrelow@salisburypost.com
ATLANTA ó Two grandsons accompanied Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski onto the ceremonial platform, where he stood to snip the final strand of a Georgia Dome net.
Exposure to a championship celebration was just as new to many of Krzyzewski’s players.
Led by an MVP performance from Jon Scheyer, the third-seeded Blue Devils captured the ACC Tournament title with a 79-69 victory against fourth-seeded Florida State on Sunday afternoon.
Scheyer scored 29 points and fellow junior Gerald Henderson had 27 as Duke (28-6) won the tournament for the first time since 2006.
“I told the kids (Saturday) night that there are a lot of winners and there are few champions,” Krzyzewski said. “They’re winners. And they were winners when they were freshmen. They were never losers. These guys have never been losers. But now they’re champions. And that’s a cool thing.”
Scheyer and Henderson were freshmen when the Blue Devils lost to N.C. State in the opening round of the ACC Tournament. Clemson beat them in the 2008 semifinals.
A junior class that also includes Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubek hasn’t advanced beyond the second round of the NCAA tournament.
“I feel like we underachieved,” said Thomas, who grabbed six offensive rebounds in the first half against Florida State’s bigger frontline. “We wanted to be so good, but time had to happen. Now we’re an older team. My class, we had that feeling when we lost early, and we came here with a better mindset. We’ve been through everything, and losing wasn’t an option.”
Duke’s long-range touch torched FSU (25-9) in the early going.
Scheyer, Henderson and Kyle Singler accounted for all of their team’s points in the first 13 minutes, when the Blue Devils went 7-for-10 on 3-pointers to establish a 29-14 lead. Singler made three in a row during a span of three minutes, 10 seconds in which they were 5-for-5 from beyond the arc.
Florida State trimmed its deficit to six points with 121/2 minutes remaining in the game, but Scheyer hit a 3-pointer to begin a 23-7 run. Scheyer and Henderson combined for 22 of Duke’s first 24 points after halftime and made clutch free throws in the closing minutes.
“We’ve put a lot of work into building our team into what it is today,” Henderson said. “Winning this championship is an accomplishment for us just because we’ve waited a long time for it, and it feels really good.”
Duke matched North Carolina’s total of 17 tournament titles by defeating the Seminoles in their first championship game appearance.
Point guard Toney Douglas, who led FSU to victories against Georgia Tech and North Carolina, had 28 points against the Blue Devils. He wrapped up the weekend with 80 points, the seventh-highest mark in tournament history.
“He’s my favorite non-Duke player in the country,” Krzyzewski said. “I mean, I love that guy. I’ve talked about him a lot to our guys. They’re going to get mad at me for talking so much.”
Krzyzewski took plenty of time to praise his own players.
The Blue Devils dropped four of six games before he inserted Elliot Williams into the starting lineup and moved Scheyer to point guard.
Duke has won eight of its last nine contests, and it received a No. 2 seed for the NCAA tournament.
“For me, I’m so happy right now experiencing this with these guys,” Krzyzewski said. “How cool is that? I’m 62. I’m almost three times as old as these guys. And I feel like we’re connected. So what they’re feeling, I think I feel a lot. And that’s worth it. It’s not numbers. It’s the experience of doing something special with quality people.”