Make it Five in a row! Florida State men keep rolling with 84-75 win at Miami
The calendar year ended with a home loss to Lipscomb. Since then, however, the Florida State men’s basketball team has caught fire.
And it continued on Wednesday night when the Seminoles went down to Coral Gables and knocked off the favored Miami Hurricanes, 84-75, to pick up their fifth straight win of the season and their 11th in the last 12 meetings against their in-state rival.
Florida State is now 11-6 overall and 5-1 in the ACC, while Miami falls to 12-5 and 3-3.
“I think we’ve become more and more of a team,” Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton said of the Seminoles’ recent hot streak. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do. … But I think we’re getting closer to developing that unity, that togetherness.”
Florida State never trailed on Wednesday night but that doesn’t mean it was a no-doubt victory from start to finish. The Seminoles led the whole way, and got the lead up to 16 early in the second half, but Miami got hot and wound up cutting the advantage to just two points with 11 minutes left on a Nigel Pack 3-pointer.
Florida State pushed the lead back up to nine, thanks to a Baba Miller 3-pointer and a Jamir Watkins 3-point play. But the Canes kept coming, at least for a while. When Norchad Omier dunked on a nice pass from Bensley Joseph, the lead was back down to just two points with 5 minutes left.
From there, it was all Florida State.
Primo Spears got fouled and made the front end of a 1-and-1 to push the lead back to three. Then he missed the second free throw, but Miller got the rebound and was fouled. He made both of his free throws to extend the lead back to five.
The lead fluctuated between four and six points as both teams took turns at the free throw line, but Watkins then delivered the highlight-reel play of the game when he took a pass near midcourt against the Miami press, raced toward the lane, rose up and then hammer-dunked it on a Omier to give the Seminoles an 81-75 lead with 2:13 left.
Spears and Jaylan Gainey then added critical free throws and the FSU defense didn’t give up another bucket the rest of the way as it left Coral Gables with yet another victory.
Miami missed its final four shots of the game, after hitting eight straight during their comeback in the second half, and didn’t score for the final 2:28 of the game.
Spears and Cameron Corhen both had 16 points off the bench for the Seminoles. Corhen was a perfect 7 of 7 from the floor. Watkins added 15 points, De’Ante Green had 10 and Miller finished with 9 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals. Jaylen Warley finished with 6 assists for the Seminoles, who had 12 steals as a team.
Florida State transfer Matthew Cleveland, who famously beat Miami last year with a buzzer-beater 3 in Coral Gables, finished with 2 points (on 1 of 8 shooting) and 2 rebounds in 36 minutes.
Florida State, which is now tied for second place in the ACC, hosts Clemson on Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Tucker Center.
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