FSU basketball: Noles look for regular season sweep over Pittsburgh

FSU basketball (8-17, 6-8 ACC) doesn’t have many wins this season. However, they have swept two regular-season series from teams at the bottom of the conference in Notre Dame and Louisville.

They’ll look for their third regular-season series sweep when they host the Pittsburgh Panthers Saturday at noon in the Tucker Center. FSU has lost four of their last five, and Pittsburgh has won four of five.

The Noles surprised everyone when they went up to Pittsburgh a few weeks ago as seven-point underdogs and defeated a Pittsburgh team near the top of the ACC Conference standings. It was a game FSU led about 80 percent of the way, including a 10-point halftime lead.

They shot the ball extremely well, 51 percent overall and 50 percent (10 of 20) from three-point land. They were also 11 of 15 (73 percent) from the charity stripe.

Pittsburgh only shot 42.6 percent overall and only made 7 of 28 three-pointers while turning the ball over 12 times. Pittsburgh enters Saturday’s game as -5.5 betting favorites with an over/under points total of 144.5. Those odds imply a 75-70 win for the Panthers.

Defense, or the lack thereof, has been the downfall of the Noles most of the season. The inability to play good perimeter defense and rebound the ball has cost them big time.

Their offense has been inconsistent, missing wide-open shots, coupled with careless turnovers or poor shot selection. It’ll likely take another hot shooting day like the first game for the Noles to surprise Pitt again Saturday afternoon.

There hasn’t been much to cheer for this season, and there don’t look like too many wins are left on the remaining schedule.

The whispers about Leonard Hamilton’s future could begin to get louder depending on how the Noles finish out the rest of this schedule.