Luke Loucks\u2019 first season as Florida State head coach hasn\u2019t gone according to plan.<\/p>\n
What was expected to be a high-powered, 3-point-focused offense instead ranks 17th out of 18 Atlantic Coast Conference teams in 3-point percentage (31.2%).<\/p>\n
That has forced the Seminoles to adopt a new defensive identity, which they bring into Saturday\u2019s game against Stanford in Tallahassee, Fla.<\/p>\n
Florida State (9-12, 2-6 ACC) allowed 78-plus points in each of its first eight games against major-conference opponents this season. Since then, it has allowed less than 70 points in three of four, including a season low against a major-conference opponent in Wednesday\u2019s 63-61 home win over Cal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you would have told me after the preseason that we would win a game 63-61, that we would shoot 1-for-8 in the second half from 3 and miss 10 free throws, and win the game, I would have called you a liar,\u201d Loucks said. \u201cBut here we are. Honestly, it\u2019s a good message and good reminder for our guys that there are two sides of basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
That defense, which ranks 16th in the ACC in opponents\u2019 shooting percentage (45.1%), stepped up, with Cal missing its final six shots and shooting 34.5% from the floor.<\/p>\n
Chauncey Wiggins tallied a team-high 18 on 7-of-9 shooting, including what amounted to the game-winner as the final made field goal of the game with 2:59 left.<\/p>\n
It was the fourth straight Florida State game decided by three points or less.<\/p>\n
The same cannot be said for Stanford (14-7, 3-5), which has lost three straight games by nine or more points since its 95-90 upset of then-No. 14 North Carolina on Jan. 14.<\/p>\n
Most recently, the Cardinal lost 79-70 at Miami on Wednesday. Stanford led by nine points with 14:20 remaining before it was outscored 39-21 the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t quite come up with enough key rebounds,\u201d Stanford coach Kyle Smith said. \u201c(Miami) made some big plays. \u2026 Their strength kind of wore us down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freshman star Ebuka Okorie experienced a return to form of sorts, scoring a team-high 19 points after going 1-for-16 from the floor against Cal and totaling 23 points in the two previous games.<\/p>\n
His 21.5 points per game rank second in the ACC and are on pace to be the most by a Stanford player since Landry Fields (22.0) in 2009-10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luke Loucks\u2019 first season as Florida State head coach hasn\u2019t gone according to plan. What was expected to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-138518","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\/138518","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=138518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}