To the average viewer, the Florida State men\u2019s basketball team probably performed fine in the first half of Friday\u2019s 101-64 win over Alabama State.<\/p>\n
The Seminoles had a 46-30 lead, shooting 43.6% while limiting the Hornets to 38.5%. With five steals, Florida State forced eight turnovers into 15 points off turnovers, also turning 10 offensive rebounds into 17 second-chance points.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s safe to say FSU head coach Luke Loucks isn\u2019t the average viewer. And he made it clear in his halftime interview on the broadcast that he wasn\u2019t satisfied by what his team did in the opening 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Alabama State outplayed us that half. We\u2019re up 16, but we made a lot of mistakes. They switched their defenses up quite a bit and to be frank, I thought they played harder than us,\u201d Loucks said. \u201cOur guys are about to hear from me. If we play like that against Florida, we\u2019re going to be down 50. It\u2019s all about building the right habits, and right now, I think we played a bad half of basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were certainly things to not like about Florida State\u2019s first half. It shot just five free throws \u2014 a byproduct of nearly two-thirds of the team\u2019s field-goal attempts being 3-pointers \u2014 while Alabama State shot 13 free throws, hitting just six of them in a lucky break for the Seminoles.<\/p>\n
His frustration certainly speaks to how he perceives his team\u2019s performance. To borrow a Mike Tomlinism, \u201cThe standard is the standard.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Loucks hasn\u2019t yet coached in a game against a high-major opponent \u2014 that comes Tuesday at Florida \u2014 he probably has an understanding that the performance his team put on the court in the first half was not going to be good enough against a similarly (or more) talented opponent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like outside of the last few minutes of the half, they outcompeted us. I don\u2019t care that we were up 16. I thought it was a poor half of basketball and I thought we were hesitating offensively,\u201d Loucks said. \u201cTheir zone got us on our heels a little bit. We were turning down good looks which resulted in poor looks, and that\u2019s not the brand of basketball we want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his postgame press conference, Loucks did praise his team for its second-half performance. After what he called a \u201cfeisty\u201d locker-room talk with his team at the half, the Seminoles met Loucks\u2019 lofty standard over the final 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo their credit, our players responded. I thought that was a great second half of basketball where we we did a good job on defense, creating great looks on offense,\u201d Loucks said. \u201cOur defense can fuel our offense. Once we get out and run, it\u2019s going to be really hard to stop us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loucks understands that down halves are going to happen. No team, no matter how talented or how well it is coached, is immune from the occasional letdown. Florida State\u2019s up-tempo offense and frenetic defensive intensity are going to really challenge his team\u2019s consistency.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s just hopeful the first half of Friday\u2019s game can be a lesson to his team. The second half was a strong start in that regard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to treat all these games, especially against lower-level opponents, in preparation for the big games,\u201d Loucks said. \u201cThat\u2019s our whole non-conference schedule is preparing for our conference schedule, both against the great opponents and the lower opponents. I felt like in the first half, we didn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the average viewer, the Florida State men\u2019s basketball team probably performed fine in the first half of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[9839,232,234,233],"class_list":["post-40010","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\/40010","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=40010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}