Late run sputters as Florida State men fall to Clemson yet again
They made a run in the second half, cutting a 16-point lead down to five, but the Florida State Seminoles just couldn’t make enough shots down the stretch to pull off the upset victory at Clemson.
The Tigers got a game-high 24 points from senior guard Joe Girard (including 10-of-10 from the free-throw line) and held off FSU for a 74-63 win on Saturday night at Littlejohn Coliseum.
With the loss, Florida State falls to 14-13 overall and 8-8 in the ACC. Clemson improves to 19-7 and 9-7.
Junior Jamir Watkins once again led the Seminoles in scoring. The VCU transfer scored 19 points and pulled down a team-high eight rebounds. Primo Spears, who hadn’t played since the first half against Duke last Saturday, scored 16 off the bench for Florida State, and Baba Miller added 12.
But other than those three, the Seminoles got very little from everyone else. Nobody scored more than six points. Other than Spears’ contributions, the rest of the Florida State bench scored a grand total of 2 points on 1-of-11 from the floor.
Chandler Jackson, who scored a career-high 19 points in a win over Boston College earlier in the week, was 0-for-5 from the floor.
Shooting guard Darin Green Jr., who sat out the victory over the Eagles with an injury, didn’t make a single 3-pointer in the loss to Clemson and had just two made field goals on the night. His last miss from beyond the arc was the biggest.
After a Miller 3-pointer cut the Tigers’ advantage to 58-53 with 6:05 left, the Seminoles got the ball back and fed Green for an attempt from the top of the key. It was short. Watkins’ follow attempt rolled off the rim, and the Seminoles never got closer than five the rest of the way.
Neither team shot well from the field. The Seminoles shot 37 percent, and the Tigers finished at 44 percent. Clemson’s leading scorer, ACC Player of the Year candidate P.J. Hall, scored just seven points before fouling out in the final minute after a double-technical foul was whistled on him and Watkins.
But Girard had 24, and the Tigers were 24-of-30 from the line overall. Florida State was 11-of-15. That 13-point spread on free throws was arguably the biggest reason the Tigers were able to finish off the regular-season sweep of the Seminoles.
Florida State recorded 11 steals and forced 15 Clemson turnovers overall. But the Tigers blocked nine shots and added six steals of their own as the Seminoles’ offense had trouble getting in any sort of rhythm.
The Seminoles play again on Tuesday night at home against N.C. State.
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