Florida State basketball lost to a UMASS team as -10.5 betting favorites on Saturday afternoon. It was their fourth consecutive loss. The biggest issue was that they allowed a team that averaged under 80 points per game to score 105. UMASS shot 54 percent overall and made 12 three-pointers (55 percent three-point shooting).
They also had 48 points in the paint, as FSU continues to offer zero resistance at the rim. FSU has some reinforcements coming on the defensive end, so I’m not too worried about that.
However, it’s the offensive approach that I have major concerns about. I’ve mentioned it several times early this season. Some folks are saying it’s a transition year, and Luck Loucks needs to get better players.
There could be some truth to that. However, here’s the issue. FSU takes three-pointers on 53.5 percent of its field goal attempts, and only makes 31.3 percent of those shots. They average 37 three-point attempts per game. Let’s do some simple math. The best shooter in basketball history, Stephen Curry, has averaged making 42 percent of his three-point shots for his career.
If FSU has a bunch of Steph Currys on its team and shoots that average on its field goal attempts, that’s still only 45 points from those shots each game. They are not a great free-throw shooting team, so they aren’t going to get a ton of points from the charity stripe. However, I’d bet FSU would get more bang for its buck if it didn’t rely on the three-point shot as much.
I’m not saying to stop taking them, but well over the majority of their overall shots? That’s like a football team throwing deep post routes 15 times a game, and it’s why you don’t see teams doing it.
It’s like once the first few shots don’t fall, they get in a big hole, and then they really have to shoot it well for any shot to stay in the game. They need to concentrate on forcing more turnovers on defense and converting those opportunities into easy buckets. FSU had 40 points in the paint and 19 from the charity stripe. However, they only had eight fastbreak points and only 12 off of 14 turnovers they generated.
I understand the offensive philosophy of shooting a lot of threes. However, if you don’t have the shooters to have success, it might be smart to find alternatives to put points on the board instead of continuing to jack up bricks. Otherwise, the losses gonna continue to pile up, and that new car smell will disappear quickly.