Duke coach Kara Lawson mentioned her workforce performed with a males’s basketball for the primary half of a loss to Florida State final Sunday.
The Sixteenth-ranked Blue Devils misplaced to the Seminoles 70-57 in Tallahassee, Florida — the workforce’s second Atlantic Coast Convention lack of the season.
After her workforce beat Pittsburgh 53-44 on Thursday, Lawson ended her information convention by talking animatedly about Sunday’s recreation.
“This could by no means occur in a males’s recreation. This could by no means occur. It is embarrassing for our sport,” she mentioned.
The circumference of a ladies’s ball is about an inch smaller than a males’s ball and it’s usually 2 ounces lighter. Whereas it might not look like so much, that is an enormous distinction.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
Lawson mentioned all through the primary half, Duke gamers had been “complaining concerning the ball.” The Blue Devils had been 7 for 34 from the sphere within the opening 20 minutes of that recreation. They had been 12 for 38 within the second half. Florida State made 10 of its 30 photographs within the first two quarters and 14 of 31 within the second half.
“To have a recreation that, on the finish of the season, might be the distinction between a seed, between a title, my gamers do not deserve that and neither do their gamers,” Lawson mentioned. “It is a full failure. And you may work out who the folks I am speaking about that failed the game and our gamers and each groups.”
Lawson mentioned assistant coach Winston Gandy went to the scorer’s desk on the half to verify on the ball when he realized what the issue was. She mentioned the sport officers modified the ball to begin the second half.
“We now have concluded by way of our investigation that it was a males’s ball,” Lawson mentioned. “The convention and Florida State is saying that it wasn’t.”
The ACC mentioned it did a complete evaluate speaking with recreation officers, directors, the desk crew and each faculties.
Gerry Broome/AP
“Following the thorough and goal evaluate course of, there was no proof discovered to assist the declare,” the convention mentioned in an announcement. “Per NCAA taking part in guidelines, there is no such thing as a attraction or protest course of.”
The ACC has instituted a procedural change that the sport ball will likely be dropped at the pregame assembly with the captains for approval.
“It’s totally irritating that (the sport) … was not handled with the utmost respect that gamers on each groups deserve,” she mentioned.
This wasn’t the primary time this has occurred in ladies’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 was found.
“Let me be clear: Florida State beat us,” Lawson mentioned. “They beat us taking part in with a males’s ball within the first half and a ladies’s ball within the second half. However I am unable to say if we’s have performed with a ladies’s ball within the first half and the second half that we might have received. However they cannot say that both.”