Florida State Drops Embarrassing Opener to Stetson
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Many of the same issues that plagued Florida State in 2021-22 were on display once again with this season's opener against Stetson. The 'Noles entered this game with just 8 available scholarship players, and two of this game's starters had never played for FSU. Stetson was blazing hot from 3 all game, partially due to FSU consistently leaving the perimeter. It was a combination of over-rotating on some, then others weren't rotating enough. And before you know it, a guy who scored 60 points all of last season has 20 at halftime.
It was just one of those games. Disappointing doesn't even begin to describe the 83-74 loss to Stetson.
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A few things immediately jump off of the page. Obviously, Stetson's 14/35 from 3 was a huge reason they won this game, specifically with Luke Brown, a Ball State transfer who scored 60 total points all of last season, scores 27 points on 7/11 from distance. He was firing heat check after heat check and they were dropping time and time again. Credit him for hitting big shots, but he was consistently getting screens and getting the matchups he wanted against FSU's bigs or lesser perimeter defenders.
FSU missed 13 free throws and pretty much everyone is to blame here. Caleb Mills was 2/4, Naheem McLeod was 0/2, Jalen Warley was 2/5, Matthew Cleveland was 4/7, Cameron Corhen was 2/4... can't be having these kinds of shooting performances in close games.
Stetson grabbed 14 offensive rebounds, which the announcers were right to call out FSU for with the size they have, but the 'Noles were consistently getting out-hustled, out-chased on long rebounds, and sometimes out-muscled. It's an embarrassing showing.
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Lastly, the bench points. FSU usually prides themselves on having a productive bench, and I get the depth has already taken a massive hit, but you can't have this. Being out-scored 44-27 from the bench is not the FSU standard.
While Matthew Cleveland's box score looked good, with 16 points and 7 rebounds, it just doesn't looked like he's learned anything from last year. He's not communicating well enough defensively and he can be a little out of control offensively, as we saw with his charge in the first half before he tried kicking to Darin Green Jr in the corner. His instincts are there, he just has to slow down just a little bit.
I liked what I saw from freshman Cameron Corhen with his 10 points, 2 rebounds, and a team-high +5, he was just getting caught on an island defensively on the perimeter and that's a tough position to be in.
The staff has to do a better job of putting these guys in a position to succeed when there is availability issues. I, as much as anyone, understand that Florida State's brand of basketball is in your face, heavy-pressure defense with an attacking offense that is constantly moving. It's fine to do that when 10-12 guys are all playing 16-24 minutes. It's a whole lot different when that gets upped to 24-28 minutes per game because you're only playing 7-8 guys, and Cleveland and Darin Green Jr played 37+ minutes. It's going to be that way until Chandler Jackson is healthy and until Baba Miller returns. Help these guys out and find ways that they can save some energy defensively. If that's not full-court pressing for a little while, do it. But clearly something is wrong when Luke Brown is taking guys off of the dribble and getting all the way to the rim. They only forced Stetson into 8 turnovers, a team that averaged 13 turnovers per game last year and lost three of their lead guards. It's simply unacceptable. If you're going to stay with your style of basketball, it needs to at least accomplish what you want, which is to generate turnovers.
Stetson wasn't even doing anything tricky offensively. They would spread out, screen until they got the matchup they wanted, drive past him, and either score or kick out for an open 3. They knew exactly what they wanted to do and abused it, much like FSU football did with the counter run against Miami last weekend.
Florida State has a LOT to figure out before they travel to Orlando and play UCF. This could be a very, very long season. No game-changing plays in the meantime as I work to get some video issues worked out.
I could sit here and nitpick all night. When you lose to a team like Stetson, there are many things that went wrong, like the inability once again to score against zone defenses. But FSU can't keep trying to do what they were doing tonight.
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