The Florida State Seminoles (14-13, 7-7) hosted a huge ACC matchup against their in-state rival Miami Hurricanes (21-6, 10-4) on Tuesday night. The Seminoles were hoping to continue their late-season momentum and extend their six-game win streak over the Hurricanes, who have had a huge season under Jai Lucas, their first-year coach.<\/p>\n
The game was close throughout, with both squads trading momentum swings. Until the last four minutes, this game was relatively even. After that, Miami pulled away under the domination of Tre Donaldson, a Tallahassee native, with his closing 7-0 run sealing the deal for Miami to beat Florida State 83-73.<\/p>\n
Both teams came out of the gate aggressively, with high energy on both sides. FSU started off emphatically with a Chauncey Wiggins block on the first possession, followed by a Thomas Bassong layup on the other end. Tre Donaldson, who has been a standout for Miami this year, came out controlling the floor and hitting a three early. It seemed that Robert McCray V has gotten comfortable in his role as the primary ball handler and the one who makes the offense hum. He came out of the gate aggressively, although starting only one of four from the field.<\/p>\n
An AJ Swinton huge three gave the Seminoles a 9-8 lead after five minutes of play. Kobe Magee hit another huge three as this Seminoles offense came out firing. Donaldson answered back with a three of his own, and Miami continued shooting the ball well, finding themselves up 18-13 with ten minutes to go in the first half. Lajae Jones hit a nasty and-one scoop under the basket to bring FSU back within a couple.<\/p>\n
A couple of buckets by Malik Reneau and Timo Malovec extended Miami\u2019s lead to 7. Robert McCray used a slick spin move to drop a mid-range jumper, and then followed it with an and-one layup attempt. Chauncey Wiggins made the game a 1-point game with a huge three of his own, though Miami found some breathing room capped off by a Tru Washington three at the buzzer to put Miami up 38-32 at halftime. Washington was the overall leading scorer with 10 points at the halfway point.<\/p>\n
After a quick momentum swing to end the second half with a missed Florida State three turning into a made Miami three, it was going to be interesting to see what that meant for each team coming out of the break. The Hurricanes led for the majority of the first half and looked to run away with the game in the second half. The outcome was that the Hurricanes took that momentum and ran with it. They extended their lead to ten within the first five minutes of the second half.<\/p>\n
Bassong began the Seminoles\u2019 momentum shift with a huge and-one to bring FSU back within seven points. Miami continued to create turnovers and plague the Seminoles early in the second half, though eventually, the Seminoles rallied for a huge comeback to make it a game once again as a Florida State 13-3 run tied the game up with around eight minutes.<\/p>\n
That was before Miami had its own answer, with Malik Reneau and company scoring two back-to-back buckets to make it a seven-point game with five and a half minutes remaining. In a chaotic sequence, Miami\u2019s Shelton Henderson rolled on the ground in pain while play continued, and Chauncey Wiggins hit a huge three to put the Seminoles within four points.<\/p>\n
The separation in this game occurred in the final four minutes, when Donaldson completely took over, sealing the deal for the Hurricanes. Despite the door seeming completely shut, the Seminoles had a couple of quick buckets to put themselves back within six points with a minute and a half to go. With a minute to go, Florida State possessed the ball and looked to make it a one-possession game. Jones hit a quick layup to cut it to four points. Malik Reneau snagged his 11th rebound of the game on a missed second free throw by Donaldson, putting it up and in to finally shut the Seminoles\u2019 late surge down.<\/p>\n
Lajae Jones shot an ultra-efficient 8 of 14 from the field tonight, while also knocking down half of his three point attempts, shooting 2 of 4. He also contributed 2 rebounds and 3 steals. Even in a losing effort, Lajae bounced back from a 3-point first half and added 18 in the second. His timely buckets kept Florida State in this one and were key in its late push to climb back into the game.<\/p>\n
Florida State will head to Atlanta, Georgia to take on Georgia Tech in an ACC matchup on Saturday February 28th. This game will tip off at 12:00p p.m. and be broadcast on ACC Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida State Seminoles (14-13, 7-7) hosted a huge ACC matchup against their in-state rival Miami Hurricanes (21-6,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[9839,232,234,233],"class_list":["post-168298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-florida-state-mens-basketball","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168298","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=168298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}