FSU Basketball: 3 takeaways from ‘Noles win over NC State

FSU basketball took another step closer to securing the No. 4 seed of the ACC Tournament. I look at three takeaways from their win over NC State.

No. 18 FSU basketball went up against a scrappy NC State team and won while facing adversity.

It’s a game that if you looked at the box score you’d ask yourself how did the Noles only win by five points?

They led by five points at halftime and stretched the lead to nine points early in the second half. Each and every time the Noles went to lift the spear for a kill shot the Wolfpack would make a huge three pointer to keep them in striking distance.

Really, that was the game as FSU’s defense limited NC State to 40 percent shooting overall. The Noles had four players score in double figures and shot 48 percent from the floor.

Three Takeways 

• Mental Toughness-This was a game FSU basketball likely would have lost a few years ago. How many times have you watched FSU lead the entire game but collapse down the stretch with poor free throw shooting? That wasn’t the case as they never surrendered the lead although NC State kept making big shots.
• Free Throw Shooting-They struggled in the first half only making 6 of 11. However, they only missed two free throws in the second half while finishing the game 23 of 30. In fact, they were 8 of 8 in the last 3:20 of the game. That’s how you put teams away.
• Shot Selection-FSU finally had a game where they didn’t force shots from beyond the arc when the shots were not falling. They made 23 percent of their three-point attempts but only attempted 13 in the game. The three-pointers only accounted for 24 percent of the total shots taken. Obviously taking the ball to the rim was the more effective strategy as they went to the foul line 30 times and it paid off because the made 23 of them.

Final Thoughts

FSU basketball is playing good basketball right now aside from the amount of turnovers they had against NC State. They need to take better care of the basketball against better teams obviously.

They are playing good defense and have crashed the boards well since the UNC game. They’ve had several players assert themselves offensively and obviously have become a much better free throw shooting team than passed years.

They’ll have a good shot to take out Virginia Tech in their next matchup with the game being at the Tuck Center. Be sure to come out and support one of the best teams in the country.