FSU Basketball Recap: Season Ends As Noles Get Destroyed by Xavier

FSU basketball watched as their season ends after a pummeling at the hands of Xavier, getting hit in the mouth early and never responding, losing 91-66.

Well, that was absolutely pathetic. A fun season season that saw the FSU basketball team win 24 regular season games ends with a 25-point loss at the hands of a painfully average Xavier team.

And thus culminated the careers of Michael Ojo, Jarquez Smith, Jonathan Isaac, and probably Xavier Rathan-Mayes and Dwayne Bacon, as well. It’s tough, but such is life. The Seminoles ceiling as a team was probably the Sweet 16, so falling a game short of that isn’t all that bad.

Sure, you can complain about just how they fell short, and I would agree with anything you might say. That was a terrible performance, and both ends. Most are going to point at the 91 points given up, but scoring 66 against the 69th-ranked defense in the country may have been worse.

Regardless, today’s outcome doesn’t change what a great year it was. Let’s get to our main takeaways.

Where was the defense?

Xavier is a bad three-point shooting team. Like, really bad. As a team, they shoot 34.2 percent. One way to get allow a bad three-point shooting team to get hot is by, well, leaving them completely wide open on their first few attempts.

Unfortunately, that’s precisely what the Seminoles did. A lack of focus and awareness defensively was apparent from the start, and ultimately did them in.

The Musketeers ended up shooting 64.7 percent from three, dropping in 11 of their 16 attempts.  Impossibly difficult to survive an onslaught like that, especially when you can’t score.

Which brings us to our next point.

Where was the offense?

It was pretty apparent that Xavier wasn’t afraid of the Seminoles three-point shooting. With good reason, they’ve been mediocre all year in that facet, and have gotten even worse more recently. So they played a tight zone, while refusing to give FSU lanes to get to the basket.

Occasionally they had lapses, which is only logical; they’ve been a very mediocre team defensively all season long. But still, the Seminoles couldn’t string together enough consecutive baskets to make it a game in the second half.

As a team, they shot 40 percent from the floor, missed five of their 19 attempts from the free throw line, and made just four three-pointers. Two of those threes were nailed by P.J. Savoy with the game very much decided, which begs the question: why has he been glued to the bench for the last month?

The one guy on your roster that can break games open with his shooting can’t get some playing time? I understand, he’s terrible defensively. It’s a trade off that would be worth it, considering it’s near impossible to win today in college basketball without some semblance of three-point shooting.

Leonard Hamilton’s rigidity with his lineups put FSU in a hole

In 2017, there is no room to play two traditional big men at the same time for long stretches. It’s a universal fact, and one that even FSU’s staff had previously accepted.

During the Seminoles heyday of the early 2010’s, they recruited guys like Okaro White to man the 4-spot; guys with the versatility to shoot threes, defend multiple positions, and complete the other tasks asked of modern power forward.

And yet, all these years later, FSU was still stuck playing Phil Cofer and Jarquez Smith at the same time. That made it even easier for Xavier’s zone to shut down offense. If Cofer has to play, it should be at the five as a small-ball center. Not next to a center who can’t stretch the floor.

Florida State Seminoles Basketball

Opportunity wasted

FSU fans were treated to a once-in-a-lifetime team this season (at least at the caliber of our recruiting).

Two former five-stars, multiple high four-stars, two guys who are going to get drafted (one of whom will go in the top 10 in this upcoming NBA Draft), filled our roster. So it feels like an opportunity slipped away when they lost in the Round of 32 of the NCAA Tournament by 25 points.

Especially in a game they were favored to win.

Now, at least two rotational players are gone, and it’s all but certain that Bacon, Isaac and Mayes will be headed to play professionally somewhere.

So it’s truly a shame that season ended this way. Without even the least bit of fight, against an inferior opponent.

Now all that’s left is to hope young guys like Trent Forrest and CJ Walker improve over the summer and the incoming recruiting class can make an immediate impact. If not, we are headed right back to the gloom of 2013-2016.