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DePaul 75, Florida St. 60

Dec 21, 2009 - 5:51 AM LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Sam Quigley and the DePaul Blue Demons left behind No. 10 Florida State in the second round of the Duel in the Desert.

Quigley scored 17 points, Anna Martin had 14, Keisha Hampton 13 to lead DePaul to a 75-60 victory over previously unbeaten Florida State on Sunday night.

The Blue Demons will face UNLV, a 67-54 winner over Hawaii in the second semifinal, in the title game Monday night.

Quigley, a 5-foot-6 junior guard, scored 12 of the Blue Demons' first 24 points and helped propel them to a 24-15 lead with 8:04 left in the opening half.

DePaul (9-3) led 37-29 at halftime, and the Blue Demons' largest lead of the game was 19 points, 75-56, in the closing minutes of the second half.

"You never know, they could always come back," Quigley said. "We just had to focus on getting stops on the defensive end and converting on that.

"One of the biggest things was rebounding. They're a huge offensive rebounding team, so just focusing on finding someone and pushing them off (was important)."

Martin made her biggest impact during the second half, when she scored eight consecutive points for the Blue Demons after the Seminoles cut it to 44-40.

Martin's jumper and two consecutive 3-pointers gave DePaul a 52-42 lead. After that, the Blue Demons led by at least seven points for the final 10 minutes.

"I know I wasn't shooting very well in the first half," Martin said. "So I knew I had to keep shooting, and we happened to be (just four points ahead) at the time.

"They were so quick and athletic that we knew at any time the game could quickly change, so I think we all kept playing and trying to do our strengths."

Florida State (10-1), which shot a season-low 33 percent (23 for 70), was led by Jacinta Monroe with 16 points and eight rebounds. Alexa Deluzio had 13 points and four assists, and Courtney Ward added 10 points.

"We missed a lot of shots early and that put us in a tough situation," Seminoles coach Sue Semrau said. "And when we get into a tough situation, we have to convert. "I thought DePaul played tough. They rebounded the ball extremely well. They're a great team.We knew they'd be great competition for us.

"We had really gotten sloppy with some of our habits and I think that this was a great wakeup call. We needed 25 offensive boards and we can't convert ... there's a little bit of focus that's not quite right, so we'll go back to work."

The Seminoles set a season high for points allowed and a season low for points scored.

The last time the Blue Demons beat a top-10 team was on Dec. 11, 2002, when they beat No. 8 Notre Dame 75-59.

The victory over Florida State, occurred in Blue Demons coach Doug Bruno's 700th game. He is 446-254 over 24 seasons at DePaul.

"We're just winning games every which way we can," Bruno said. "We won last night, 46-45 (over Arkansas). Generally, we're a higher scoring team. Tonight, we had some rhythm offensively and we were able to get the game into the 70s. It's such a state of discovery of ourselves. It's finding out who we are."