Florida State vs Wake Forest Basketball Recap

Florida State 51, Wake Forest 47

It was ugly. It was comically inept at times. It produced a great deal of fear, anxiety and heightened blood pressure levels in the audience that came to view it.

But oh, what a glorious result it produced.

Wednesday night's ACC game between Florida State and Wake Forest was hardly a thing of beauty in terms of its aesthetic value, but on the scoreboard and in the win column, it looked like a Rembrandt for the ultimately successful Seminoles.

No, coach Leonard Hamilton's FSU crew won't win any awards for artistic impression after fending off Wake Forest by four points in Tallahassee, Fla., but the object of late-season basketball is not to create style points (that's a BCS football consideration). All that matters is the entry in the left-hand column of the win-loss ledger, and after dunking the visiting Demon Deacons at the Donald Tucker Center, it's a near certainty that Florida State will make its way back to the NCAA Tournament.

The Seminoles might play a visually unattractive brand of basketball, but one of the hardest-working teams in the United States has earned the right to take a ticket to the field of 65 in two weeks' time. Now graced with a 9-6 mark in the ACC, FSU would become a stone-cold lock if it can dispose of lowly Miami this upcoming Saturday in South Florida. Yet, even if the Noles were to fall short in that game, the value of Wednesday night's win over Wake should probably be enough come Selection Sunday.

Just how, then, did Florida State snag the biggest win of its season to date? With a fairly typical formula consisting of defensive grit, an opponent's poor habits, and a little bit of luck at the end.

Florida State is one of the best defensive teams in the country, but a terrible offensive unit. The Seminoles hit only 37 percent of their shots, but they forced 19 Wake Forest turnovers in this game, a testament to the work ethic instilled into this club by Hamilton, a blue-collar coach with a simple approach to the sport. Hamilton-coached teams don't win with sophistication; they prevail in large part because of elbow grease, and that lunch-pail identity was once again in evidence against Coach Dino Gaudio's Demon Deacons.

Wake Forest is the antithesis of FSU. The Deacs like to run as much as possible and create a freewheeling, open-court game in the high 80s or low 90s. Wake Forest's lightning-quick guard, Ishmael Smith, loves to play racehorse basketball, and after he scored eight points in the first seven minutes, it seemed possible that Wake would control the flow of the action for most of the evening.

That opening assault, however, proved to be the only time in which "Ish" got to display a sustained amount of excellence. After his early surge, Smith was held in check by FSU point guard Derwin Kitchen and the rest of the Seminole defense, which did a great job of staying in front of dribblers and denying penetration into the lane. Whereas Wake wants a fast and furious pace, the Seminoles prefer to play slowdown slugfests in the 50s, so it's clear who dictated tempo in this tussle. After exploding in the first few minutes, the Demon Deacons rarely if ever strung together two or three high-quality possessions. Florida State fashioned this competition according to its unique set of strengths.

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Yet, for all the ways in which they shaped the style of play to their own preferences, the Seminoles also left the door open for the Deacs to steal a win in the Florida panhandle, in a manner reminiscent of a recent meltdown.

This past Sunday, Florida State hosted Clemson. The Noles led 47-42 with 2:10 left, but a toxic combination of missed free throws, poor decisions, and sweaty-palmed dropped passes allowed Clemson to come back and stun Hamilton's heartbroken players, 53-50. With the memory of that collapse firmly in mind, the Seminoles had to wonder if Wake Forest was going to deliver a dose of deja vu.

Leading 49-45 with 2:30 left, Florida State watched in horror as Kitchen - a guard not blessed with great scoring ability but a generally steady ballhandler - simply lost control of the rock on a move to the hoop. As was the case in the Clemson game, an FSU player simply couldn't hold onto the pill. The Noles endured a turnover that was simply the result of a physical error, not a poor decision or a miscalculation of some sort. As a result of that play, Wake was able to pull within two points, at 49-47, and apply additional game pressure to an impotent FSU offense.

As the final two minutes slowly ticked off the clock in Tallahassee, Florida State looked every bit the part of a team that was just waiting to lose in the final seconds of regulation. Repeatedly given the ball with a two-point lead, the Noles did nothing with numerous opportunities, committing turnovers on back-to-back possessions and giving Wake even more chances to tie or win. When the Deacons received one more possession in the final minute, a lot of Florida State fans had to be wondering how their team would cough up another game, and go from being an NCAA Tournament team to a 50-50 bubble ballclub in the blink of an eye.

This is when the proceedings became truly comical.

For reasons that defy rational explanation, the Deacons - trailing 49-47 - chose to dribble out almost all of the shot clock at a point in time when there was just a two-second difference between the game clock and the shot clock. Wake got the ball with 37 seconds remaining, so it's not as though Gaudio and the rest of his staff lacked the ability to extend the game. Florida State entered Wednesday's contest ranked 285th in the country from the foul line, so it was in Wake's best interest to expand the endgame phase as much as possible and force the Seminoles to close the sale at the charity stripe. Yet, after a timeout and then a scoreboard malfunction that interrupted the Deacons' set play off the inbounds pass, Ish Smith was seen dribbling the ball just past midcourt, without making an attempt to advance the ball.

Yes, the unthinkable had become reality: Wake Forest, down by two in the final minute of a game, was acting as though the game was tied. Smith didn't initiate the offense until roughly 10 seconds were left on the shot clock. By the time Wake's Ari Stewart tried to drive to the lane from the left wing, three FSU defenders were able to converge, and when Seminole swingman Chris Singleton picked Stewart's pocket with just five seconds left in the game (and three on the shot clock for Wake), the Deacons lost the ability to extend the game. FSU's Michael Snaer (who went 6 of 6 at the line in a huge step-up performance) nailed both foul shots with 4.2 seconds to go, and the home team had earned its way - most likely - into the field of 65.

Nothing about Wake-FSU was pretty on Wednesday night... except for the fact that Leonard Hamilton's program is on its way to the tournament that validates a coaching staff's performance. Call Florida State basketball an inartful outfit. Just be sure to call the Seminoles tournament-bound as well.



By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer