FSU turns back Duke

But it didn’t, rimming out as time expired to clinch the Seminoles’ 62-59 victory. They will face North Carolina in Sunday’s 1 p.m. championship game. FSU has never won the ACC tournament.

“It was the longest 3 seconds of my life,” said Loucks, who made two free throws and a long jumper in the final minute to give FSU its cushion. Michael Snaer had 16 points to lead the Seminoles, who defeated the Tar Heels 90-57 earlier this season.

FSU (23-9) coach Leonard Hamilton said he knew if his team didn’t guard Duke for 40 minutes, his Seminoles might not advance to the tournament championship for the second time in four years.

Almost every second counted.

Austin Rivers missed a 3-pointer with six seconds left that was well-guarded and could have sent the game to overtime.

Curry got a chance because FSU, out of timeouts, couldn’t get the ball inbounds after Rivers’ miss. Rather than take the violation and give Duke (27-6) the ball under the basket, Jeff Peterson threw the ball as high and as far as he could.

“Unfortunately, Jeff doesn’t have quarterback skills,” Louck said.

The ball came down near midcourt, where it was tipped around before Curry grabbed it with three seconds left, took a few steps and made his attempt. It was one of the few shots that wasn’t contested by FSU, which held the Blue Devils to 37.3 percent shooting and harassed them into 16 turnovers.

“We needed one stop and couldn’t get that one stop,” Krzyzewski said. “They executed and we couldn’t get that stop. Our guys played winning basketball. When you lose playing winning basketball you shake hands and thank god you get a chance to play one more game.”

The Blue Devils were already thin in the front court without 6-foot-11 Ryan Kelly, who missed his second game after spraining his right foot last week. His absence didn’t help against Florida State, which features one of the deepest and most athletic front courts in the ACC.

After starting the half with a four-minute scoreless stretch in which FSU increased its one-point halftime lead to six, Duke eventually took a 54-53 lead with two Curry free throws with 5:03 left.

Though his team had scored only four points in the previous three minutes, Hamilton told them not to worry during a timeout.

“The game was not over, we had plenty of time to win the game,” he said. “We needed to keep defending, rebounding and get stops. It’s not that we weren’t getting good shots, we were just missing them.”