Posted by BillFromTampa

As I often like to do after attending a Florida State basketball game in person, I will watch my tape of the game. With the game on Saturday and a long drive back to Tampa the first available time was Sunday morning. So I gave up my usual Sunday morning golf game to bring to you these hopefully scintillating observations from the Maryland game.

I would call that game just another typical game in the ACC. No matter who you are playing you are going to have a battle every game all game long. And Florida State almost succumbed to what Maryland experienced against Miami in giving up a double digit lead nearly losing the game.

That didn’t happen thankfully.

Once again FSU found a way to win the game and you can look to Toney Douglas for that who had a game like what you expect from your senior leader (25 points, 6 rebounds, AND 4 steals). It’s clear that when the game is on the line he wants the ball in his hands and knows what to do with it. Just as he did in overtime with FSU’s first seven points of the extra period highlighted by that three pointer out past the key giving the ‘Noles a 73-71 lead they would not give up.

The television crew of Tim Brandt and Dan Bonner billed this as a game between Douglas and Greivis Vasquez.

Douglas obviously won that battle and for that you can thank in part Jordan DeMercy who had the primary assignment of guarding Vasquez. DeMercy did an excellent job helped by occasional double teams and also in my opinion Vasquez was quite passive and made numerous poor decisions with the ball.

But don’t let that take away from what kind of job DeMercy did against him. The coaching staff afterwards was very pleased with his efforts against the Maryland point guard.

As one person in the program said to me after the game, if Vasquez has his normal game (he is Maryland’s leading scorer at 17 ppg but was held to just six) FSU probably does not win that game. So if you get a chance to see Jordan, give him a big congratulations on a job well done.

As the first half ended I asked myself with as good as FSU played (and they did) how were we only up by two points? I answered that question by noting the three offensive fouls that took away three baskets notably the charge on Derwin Kitchen who lobbed an alley oop to DeMercy. There was also a point blank slam dunk that Solomon Alabi missed (he missed another in the second half as well). But Alabi had three very nice jumpers continuing on what we saw against NC State including that face up 12 footer we had not previously seen out of him. A seven plus footer misses the slams, but makes the jumpers. Go figure. That’s how the ball bounces sometimes.

But on some other good bounces of the ball I guarantee you right now the year-end highlight film will include the two layups by Toney (the steal off Vasquez’ pass to Hayes beating Hayes and Neal with a layup from the left side with his right hand and then the transition basket against Tucker flipping it up left handed taking the contact from Tucker for the three point play) and the one from Luke Loucks (taking the pass from DeMercy going the distance to the hole past Hayes laying it in from the left right handed and then later in the game dribbling past Gregory left handed to give FSU its largest lead, 52-41 with 12:07 to play).

That leads me to the last 9:20 of regulation and that 3-2 zone Maryland slapped on us. First of all I hope we NEVER see that thing again. It was quite effective. But maybe not quite as effective as you might initially think. At least that’s what I found in re-watching the game.

Without boring everyone with a detailed break down of each possession, I’ll just say that FSU had 22 possessions against that zone including seven in overtime.

Five of the possessions ended with a bad turnover by the Seminoles including a shot clock violation. Needless to say we could do without those.

Other than the previous five I just mentioned, only three possessions I thought were very poorly executed caused by either no movement by the players, poor ball movement, or in one case a three taken far too early in the possession.

The one possession I had the most issue with was with 22 seconds left in regulation FSU walked it up the floor only to have Leonard Hamilton call a timeout with 11 seconds remaining in the game. Why? Maryland had no timeouts left and that timeout taken resulted in a loooooooong three by Douglas that was obviously no good.

The remaining possessions that FSU did not score on saw the ‘Noles get a lot of decent looks that would just not go down, get a lot of offensive rebounds, but just unable to get the ball in the hoop. The best possession in which FSU did not score a basket was really the first one where ball movement was excellent zipping it around to all five players. But even then FSU got the offensive rebound and got a couple of Ryan Reid free throws out of it.

The remaining possessions we scored a basket or free throws. So we knock down a few of those good looks and maybe Maryland does not stay in that zone for that long. But we didn’t and that highlights that FSU is not especially a great shooting team.

Despite that I saw some very pleasing things out of FSU’s offense in that game. In the past I’ve been critical of our use of screen roll plays. The ‘Noles just didn’t execute them very well in particular throwing the ball to the screener.

That’s where Derwin Kitchen has had a big impact. Several times screens were set (three plays of note – 16:50 Uche Echefu sets the screen with Derwin getting him the ball as he rolled towards the basket; although Solomon Alabi missed the floater, Alabi set a nice screen on the right wing where Kitchen got him the ball as Alabi was wide open; and lastly Derwin’s alley oop pass to Solomon to make it 31-30 as Alabi rubs off Hayes forcing Neal to leave Solomon allowing Alabi cut cleanly to the basket for the pass from Kitchen). FSU has been missing that from the PG position. Look for FSU to get even better in that area.

I won’t get into rebounding much. It was not good. Landon Milborne simply wanted the ball more and while there were some lucky bounces of the ball no one bothered to put a body on him especially with that put back to tie the game at 66 a piece.

What game officiated by Jamie Luckie would not be complete without some rant on this referee’s “interesting” way of calling a game. We’ll just sum it up with the foul called on Luke Loucks in the first half going for a loose ball heading toward’s FSU’s bench. As the person next to me said, apparently grabbing Luke around the throat as Sean Mosely did does not warrant a foul. The Maryland fan on my other side actually concurred with that statement.

Lastly, as I was singing the praises of FSU’s own Garnet and Gold girls and their “talent” to the friend of mine who came to the game with me, it was disappointing to not have them there (as well as the FSU cheerleaders). Did someone neglect to inform them of the schedule? DON’T do that again please.

That disappointment aside the most important aspect of the game is that FSU improved to 15-3 and 2-1 in the ACC (and if I recall this correctly the ‘Noles are 14-1 when leading at the half). With a trip to Miami on Wednesday night, having shown that they can win on the road in the conference, there’s a good chance FSU could be 3-1 after that game. It won’t be easy though as Saturday’s game proved.

Congrats also to the good sized crowd that turned out for this noon game.