Florida State men look to shore up defense, stop skid at Notre Dame
The Florida State men’s basketball team is still hovering around .500 in the Atlantic Coast Conference despite its dreadful overall record.
But if the Seminoles (5-13 overall, 3-4 in the ACC) are going to break their recent two-game losing streak, they’ll have to defend better than they did in their previous two games.
Wake Forest scored 90 points and hit 14 of 26 3-point attempts in a 15-point win in Winston-Salem. Then Virginia came to the Tucker Center and hit 11 of 22 shots from beyond the arc on their way to a rather easy 67-58 win over the Seminoles.
So, Florida State’s last two opponents have combined to go 25-of-48 from 3-point land.
Mainly because both teams got open shot after open shot against the Seminoles’ defense, and if that troubling trend continues for FSU, Leonard Hamilton’s team could be in for a long two hours tonight in South Bend.
Notre Dame is just 9-9 overall and 1-6 in the ACC, including a one-point loss to Florida State earlier in the year, but the Fighting Irish have a bunch of quality outside shooters. Notre Dame is currently shooting 38 percent from 3-point range as a team, trailing only Clemson and Virgina in the conference.
Meanwhile, Florida State is second to last in the ACC in 3-point percentage defense, allowing opponents to shoot almost 37 percent from beyond the arc.
“They were playing a team that was not aggressive enough to get out and contest those shots,” Hamilton said when asked how Virginia got so many open looks on Saturday. “The ball was on a rope, and we didn’t have the same level of energy to contest those shots as we have been accustomed to.”
The Seminoles and Fighting Irish are also the worst two rebounding teams in the ACC. In the 73-72 FSU win in December, the Seminoles won the rebounding battle 29-28.
In that game, freshman Cameron Corhen had his best game — up until that point — of the season with 18 points and seven rebounds in 31 minutes. Corhen is coming off another strong performance in Saturday’s loss to Virginia, tallying 15 points (on 6-of-8 shooting) in 32 minutes.
Corhen was forced to play that many minutes because freshman Baba Miller missed the game with tonsillitis. Hamilton said on Monday he wasn’t sure if Miller would be able to play against the Fighting Irish tonight or not.
Sophomore Matthew Cleveland also recorded his seventh straight double-double in the loss to Virginia, becoming the first Seminole to accomplish that feat in 50 years. The last Seminole to earn eight straight double-doubles was Reggie Royals in the 1970-71 season. Royals had nine in a row to finish that campaign.
NBA Hall-of-Famer Dave Cowens had 24 straight double-doubles in the 1968-69 season.
Florida State and Notre Dame tip off tonight at 7 p.m. ET on ESPNU.
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