Duke University women’s basketball coach says her team played first half with the wrong ball
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Throughout a postgame interview on Thursday, Duke College coach Kara Lawson spoke passionately concerning the staff’s Sunday recreation.
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In response to Lawson, her gamers complained concerning the basketball throughout the first half of the sport in opposition to FSU.
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Whereas Lawson alleges it was males’s basketball used within the first half, the ACC and FSU concluded in any other case, per ESPN.
The coach of the Duke College girls’s basketball staff expressed her disdain for a way an alleged ball mix-up was dealt with after a Thursday recreation.
Coach Kara Lawson ended her information convention after Duke’s win in opposition to the College of Pittsburgh by calling out her points throughout a earlier recreation in opposition to Florida State. In response to Lawson, the Blue Devils and Seminoles spent the primary half of Sunday’s recreation taking part in with a males’s basketball. Duke went on to lose the matchup by 13 factors, 57-70.
“This is able to by no means occur in a males’s recreation. This is able to by no means occur,” she mentioned on the postgame convention. “It is embarrassing for our sport.”
Lawson mentioned her gamers complained concerning the ball, making seven photographs out of 34 makes an attempt within the first 20 minutes of the sport. Their opponents made 10 of their 30 photographs within the first half, ESPN reported.
Basketballs utilized by males within the NBA and on the college-level have a circumference of about 29.5 inches whereas balls utilized by the WNBA and ladies’s faculty groups are 28.5 inches, based on digital sports activities publication Stack.com. Lawson and her staff allege the proper balls have been swapped in after Duke assistant coach Winston Gandy alerted officers at halftime.
“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,” she mentioned within the information convention.
Regardless of her outrage, Atlantic Coast Convention and Florida State officers concluded the ball used throughout the first half of Sunday’s recreation, which was performed in Florida, wasn’t a males’s basketball.
“Following the thorough and goal assessment course of, there was no proof discovered to assist the declare,” the convention mentioned in a press release, per ESPN. “Per NCAA taking part in guidelines, there is no such thing as a enchantment or protest course of.”
Regardless of Lawson’s considerations concerning the balls used throughout the recreation, she gave Florida State credit score for the win.
“Let me be clear: Florida State beat us. They beat us taking part in with a males’s ball within the first half and a girls’s ball within the second half,” Lawson mentioned. “However I can not say if we would have performed with a girls’s ball within the first half and the second half that we’d have gained. However they cannot say that both.”
Duke has a 9-2 document this season within the ACC and is 19-3 total.
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