FSU basketball had to try and beat the Clemson Tigers and the referees Saturday afternoon. Fans react to the loss.
No. 6 FSU basketball (24-5, 14-4 ACC) blew its chance to win the ACC regular-season championship with its 70-69 loss to Clemson (15-13, 9-9 ACC) Saturday.
The Noles led by eight points at halftime despite a lot of questionable calls from the referees. The propensity of the guys in the stripes to affect the game continued in the second half and ultimately affected the end of the game.
They called at least 10 bogus fouls on the Noles and blew an inadvertent whistle at the end of the game when FSU was going in for a breakaway dunk.
The Noles ultimately had a chance to win the game and took the lead with about eight seconds left. However, they had used all of their timeouts and Clemson got the ball in and drove the length of the court to make a layup with one second remaining.
Fan Reaction
So trash man. Nothing else you can say other than the ACC ruins another game.
— Dustin Lewis (@DustinLewisNG) February 29, 2020
Literally criminal watch just happened in Clemson. CRIMINAL.
Basketball, football, FSU stay getting fucked by officiating
— Ayo_Adrien (@AYO_Adrien) February 29, 2020
5 offensive fouls? Only in @theACC can basketball refs pull these shenanigans off. #goacc
— FSU2Times (@FSU2Times) February 29, 2020
NCAA men’s basketball needs to clean house and start over on their referee staff. I don’t even care about the FSU Clemson game, but this is ridiculous
— stebo (@Stephenmiller75) February 29, 2020
Thoughts
The referees were awful, calling charge on two AND-1 plays in the first half that erased a guaranteed four points, and potentially six.
However, FSU basketball did themselves no favors with turning the ball over, and that’s something Clemson capitalized on as they had over 20 points off those. The loss means FSU will not win the ACC regular-season title outright unless Duke loses again, and FSU wins their last two games.
FSU also missed seven free throws during the contest, going 11 of 17 from the charity stripe. They’ll travel to Notre Dame Wednesday to take on the Irish at 9 p.m. ET, with the game airing on ESPN2