The Seminoles took on the Maine Blackbears recently and to be blunt Maine should not have stood a chance with FSU. And, in the 95-55 final score it appears that they didn’t. FSU hit a team high, 20 3-pointers and looked great in the last 5 minutes of the game. However, call me a perfectionist but I didn’t like what I saw from the Noles that night for the first 35 minutes.
In a game that was quite possibly the most disgustingly sloppy game I’ve seen outside of a playground, I couldn’t believe that FSU was playing down to their competition for that long a stretch. Sure, they won a blowout game, but what the box scores don’t show is the careless ball management, poor shot selection, bad fouls and a stagnant offense. Seriously, 17 turnovers against Maine is unacceptable.
The small optimist in me likes to think that Hamilton took this time to help some of those younger players and the players that don’t get much playing time normally, some game experience. If true, I don’t mind it as much. However, there is still is a major flaw in the FSU game.
The offense needs to change things up. Who am I to challenge Coach Hamilton’s expertise in the field? I’m just a lowly writer. But I do know how the game looks from outside the box; and from out here it looks bad.
Before the season started, I heard players and coaches say that because Thorton was gone, it made the team more dangerous because teams don’t have someone to focus in on. They’d be unpredictable. However, it has done the opposite. They have become predictably stagnant because there is not one person that knows when and where to shoot the ball. This seemingly leads to a number of players taking bad shots. The set plays are sloppy and seem to be pointless because there is no overall focus of the teams offense.
FSU needs desperately to identify someone to have the offense run through. My belief is that FSU should designate Swann for this task. If it were possible to turn him into a catch and shoot player, his range would be devastating. The offense should be founded on getting Swann the ball; frequently. This would help first keeping play disciplined and also, preventing those stagnant periods.
With some bigger games coming up (i.e. Butler, Ga. Tech), we’ll see how the coaching staff addresses these deficiencies.
