Posted by BillFromTampa

Leonard Hamilton had a short talk with his two point guards last Wednesday. What he told them was sometimes you need to step out of your comfort zone and be aggressive.

Unselfish is not always a good thing and the usually unselfish guards responded.

Two days after Derwin Kitchen obliterated his previous career mark, Luke Loucks followed Kitchen’s lead in scoring 19 points, five better than his prior career high, in leading Florida State to a 71-65 victory over the Miami Hurricanes.

Loucks blistered the nets connecting on 5 of 7 from the floor including 3 of 5 three pointers and added 6 of 8 from the free throw line. In addition the sophomore pulled down five boards and had only one turnover against three assists in 25 minutes of court time.

It was Loucks’ best all around game in his nearly two seasons at FSU.

He did have help however with a lot of guys stepping up as Hamilton said afterwards.

“Chris Singleton, Solomon Alabi, and even Xavier Gibson who gave us tremendous contributions tonight.”

Among those contributions was a dazzling drop step against Randy Johnson along the right baseline ending with a reverse slam dunk for the Dothan, Alabama native in scoring 8 points along with 4 rebounds.

Singleton was the only other Seminole in double digits with 10 points and Alabi added 9 but was very efficient with his shooting connecting on 3 of 4 shots.

Overall it was a very efficient FSU offense that often struggles against Miami’s zone defense. For the game the ‘Noles shot 48% from the floor, 40% (6-15) from the arc, and  despite a handful of misses in the last minutes of the game had good night from the stripe (17-27).

“We missed a few free throws down the stretch making it closer than it needed to be”, Hamilton said. “I thought we were a little tight at the start. But we had periods where we executed very well especially in the second half.”

That was reflected in the lack of turnovers the Seminoles had in the second period with just 2 and finishing with only 11, a big improvement from the 17 per game.

Hamilton avoided the topic as long as he could before Michael Snaer was mentioned. Informed after yesterday’s practice, Snaer got the starting nod over Devidas Dulkys. Hamilton felt the freshman was a little tight to start the game but played with a great deal of energy in scoring 9 points.

Just 3 of 11, Snaer hit a big three pointer out of an FSU timeout to give the ‘Noles a 56-47 lead with 4:50 to play. In the first half though was a highlight reel driving reverse layup that gave the Seminoles a 25-24 lead during an 11-2 FSU run.

“It’s obvious David is pressing and we’re just trying to take the pressure off of him”, added Hamilton.

The Seminoles took a 32-31 lead into the locker room off of nice ball movement got the ball to Loucks’ head fake allowed him to drive into the lane for a floater with three seconds left. It proved to be an important basket as FSU is now 15-1 when leading at the half.

The two teams traded the lead for the first five plus minutes of the second half.

Tied at forty, Ryan Reid dribbled hard down to the left of the lane drawing two defenders to him. A wrap around pass to Alabi resulted in an easy basket giving FSU a 42-40 lead with 12:52 to play.

The Seminoles never trailed again and ran the lead up to 53-43 after Gibson’s spin move on the baseline.

Miami did make it interesting in the last half minute of the game when James Dews (15 points) canned a wide open three from the left wing to pull with four, 67-63. But Loucks swished two from the line and Reid added a layup to put the game out of reach.

Dews added a meaningless basket for the final margin.

Dwayne Collins added 11 points for the ‘Canes (16-7, 2-7).

With the win, Florida State improves to 17-6, 5-4 to stay in contention in a very tightly packed ACC race moving back into fifth place all alone.

The Seminoles will play their next three of four games on the road starting with a trip to Clemson, 70-59 losers to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Tipoff is Wednesday at 7 PM and will be televised on ESPN2.