Duke’s Kara Lawson says males’s ball utilized in 1st half vs. FSU

Duke girls’s basketball coach Kara Lawson mentioned the groups performed with a males’s basketball for the primary half of a loss to Florida State on Sunday.

The Sixteenth-ranked Blue Devils misplaced to the Seminoles 70-57 in Tallahassee, Florida — the crew’s second ACC lack of the season.

After her crew beat Pittsburgh 53-44 on Thursday, Lawson ended her information convention by talking animatedly about Sunday’s sport.

“This would never happen in a men’s game. This would never happen,” she mentioned. “It’s embarrassing for our sport.”

The circumference of a girls’s ball is about an inch smaller than a males’s ball, and it’s usually 2 ounces lighter. Whereas it won’t look like lots, that is an enormous distinction.

Lawson mentioned that all through the primary half, Duke gamers have been “complaining about the ball” whereas going 7-for-34 from the sphere within the opening 20 minutes. They have been 12-for-38 within the second half. Florida State made 10 of its 30 pictures within the first two quarters and 14 of 31 within the second half.

“To have a game that, at the end of the season, could be the difference between a seed, between a title, my players don’t deserve that and neither do their players,” Lawson mentioned. “It’s a complete failure. And you can figure out who the people I’m talking about that failed the sport and our players and both teams.”

Lawson mentioned assistant coach Winston Gandy went to the scorer’s desk on the half to test on the ball when he realized what the issue was. She mentioned the sport officers modified the ball to begin the second half.

“We have concluded through our investigation that it was a men’s ball,” Lawson mentioned. “The conference and Florida State is saying that it wasn’t.”

The ACC mentioned it did a complete evaluate, speaking with sport officers, directors, the desk crew and each colleges.

“Following the thorough and objective review process, there was no evidence found to support the claim,” the convention mentioned in an announcement. “Per NCAA playing rules, there is no appeal or protest process.”

The ACC has instituted a procedural change that the sport ball will probably be dropped at the pregame assembly with the captains for approval.

“It’s very frustrating that [the game] … was not treated with the utmost respect that players on both teams deserve,” Lawson mentioned.

This would not be the primary time this has occurred in girls’s basketball. In 2017, the Faculty of Charleston performed dwelling video games and practiced with males’s balls for many of its season till the error was found.

“Let me be clear: Florida State beat us. They beat us playing with a men’s ball in the first half and a women’s ball in the second half,” Lawson mentioned. “But I can’t say if we’d have played with a women’s ball in the first half and the second half that we would have won. But they can’t say that either.”