Syracuse and Florida State are trending in opposite directions heading into Tuesday’s matchup on the Orange’s home court.<\/p>\n
With five wins in its last six games, Syracuse (11-5, 2-1 ACC) has found an offensive rhythm in recent weeks. The Orange have scored at least 76 points during each of their last five victories, including an 83-72 triumph at Pitt on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Donnie Freeman, who has been injured for most of the season, scored 22 points in his third game since returning to the Syracuse lineup. He made 3 of 6 3-pointers and has knocked down multiple shots from beyond the arc in each game since his return.<\/p>\n
“He’s a guy who can stretch the floor,” Syracuse coach Adrian Autry said. “He’s capable of making three to five 3s a game.”<\/p>\n
JJ Starling and Tyler Betsey each connected on three 3-pointers as well, helping Syracuse shoot 45.5% from deep.<\/p>\n
The biggest key to the Orange’s recent surge, however, may be defense. The Panthers shot just 5 of 26 from 3-point range against Syracuse, four days after Georgia Tech shot 4 of 18 from outside the arc in a loss to the Orange.<\/p>\n
“As of late, nobody has really been getting open looks against us,” Syracuse guard Naithan George said. “And that makes teams uncomfortable.”<\/p>\n
Speaking of being uncomfortable, it was not a relaxing scene after Florida State (7-9, 0-3) fell to 2-8 in its last 10 games with an ugly 113-69 home loss to North Carolina State on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“They continued to punch us in the mouth with no response,” Seminoles coach Luke Loucks said.<\/p>\n
Florida State shot just 39.3% from the floor and 5 of 23 from 3-point land while allowing NC State to shoot 55.1% from the field and a blistering 19 of 35 from long distance.<\/p>\n
“With our effort level, I’m actually surprised we only got beat by 40-something,” said Loucks, whose team was led by Thomas Bassong’s 14 points. “We should have been beaten by 70 with the way we played.”<\/p>\n
The Seminoles and Orange met twice last season. Florida State won 90-74 in Tallahassee before Syracuse got revenge with a 66-62 victory in the ACC tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Syracuse and Florida State are trending in opposite directions heading into Tuesday’s matchup on the Orange’s home court.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-116144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-tallahassee","9":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","10":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}