Posted by BillFromTampa

Just when it looked like Florida State would tie Maryland Michael Snaer was called for charging into Dino Gregory with 14.5 seconds left taking away Snaer’s floater in the lane. The foul proved very costly that negated a tremendous hustle play by Chris Singleton to block Adrian Bowie’s breakaway lay up a minute earlier.

Time was short and Maryland made five of six free throws in those remaining seconds to defeat Florida State 71-67 dropping the Seminoles to 4-4 in conference play.

A Florida State turnover led to a two on none breakaway and what looked like a sure two points that would have put Maryland up 68-64. But Singleton came from nowhere racing at least 75 feet to block Bowie’s shot from behind keeping the ‘Noles within two and with just over a minute to play.

Forced to foul after Snaer’s charge, his fifth foul of the game, Greivis Vasquez sank tow freebies.

Kitchen was allowed an uncontested lay up and Sean Mosley was fouled immediately on the inbound pass. Mosley however made only one of two to make it a 69-66 game with eight seconds left.

Gary Williams had his team foul Singleton with two seconds left, a wise strategy considering Singleton’s free throw percentage. Singleton made the first of his two free throws while intentionally missing his second in an attempt to get the rebound, score, and tie the game. But Singleton missed the rim altogether turning the ball over to Maryland.

Vasquez made sure there would be no game tying basket by getting the final two points at the stripe.

It was a career night for Derwin Kitchen who scored 29 points on 12 of 16 from the floor. That however was little consolation to the junior guard.

It didn’t help that Kitchen got little offensive support with Solomon the only other Seminole in double figures with 12 points.

Overall the team shot poorly against the third best defense in the ACC in field goal defense percentage. As a team the ‘Noles were just 38% with three of the nine Seminoles who played not scoring at all.

Singleton was just 1 of 7 for only 5 points.

“It was just one of those games where we did not shoot well”, Leonard Hamilton said afterwards. “We got good looks but could not find the basket.”

“You could see the frustration set it and that affected our shots.”

Noticeable in his absence in the scoring ledger was Devidas Dulkys who was 0-7 and now scoreless in his last two games.

“Give Maryland credit, we got beat by a team that executed better than us”. Hamilton commented. “They were a little more mature.”

“We didn’t play poorly overall. We just had stretches where we didn’t make good decisions. We would shoot the ball on the first pass. Not necessarily a bad shot. But we didn’t give Maryland a chance to make a mistake on defense. “

The Seminoles took a 29-25 lead into the locker room.

The Terrapins however came out determined to take control of the game. The four point margin quickly disappeared as the Terps went on a 7-0 run to take a 32-29 lead causing Hamilton to call a timeout.

While Kitchen came out of the timeout to nail a three and tie the score, FSU could never gain a lead on Maryland.

The Terrapins stretched out a 60-52 lead with 5:52 left after Eric Hayes’ backdoor lay up. But the Seminoles went on a 7-0 run that included highlight reel slam dunks by Snaer and Singleton both off steals at the other end.

FSU could not get the defensive stops when needed however. Landon Milborne crashed in between two Seminoles to grab an offensive rebound. Fouled on the play Milborne, made both free throws.

Even after Kitchen tied it at 62 with his third three pointer of the game the Seminoles could not stop the Terps setting up the costly turnover by Snaer.

Commenting on the foul, Hamilton would only say “We put ourselves in a position where the calls at the end hurt us.”

Florida State has little time to dwell on one that got away as the ‘Noles will host the16-6, 2-6 Miami Hurricanes on Saturday at 8:00 PM.