Postgame Thread: Florida State Seminoles smother Boston College Eagles, 80-62

It was always going to be an uphill battle against #7 Florida State. When you take them on in their house, on senior day, it only gets tougher. And then when you are missing Nik Popovic, Jairus Hamilton, and Jared Hamilton, well… yeah. With all those factors taken into account, this game went about the way one expected: the Eagles got outplayed and outmuscled by a deep Seminole team hungry for its first regular season ACC title ever, 80-62. Balsa Koprivica led all 15 of FSU’s scorers with 15 points, while Derryck Thornton led the Eagles with 11. BC shot just 33% from the floor and committed 19 turnovers.

FSU rushed out to a 6-0 start, and while BC would occasionally look like it was stringing together a competent offense, it always stopped short of actually coming together. It was the same story we’ve seen all season: to make up for talent disadvantage, the Eagles had to rely on deep shooting, which they are not particularly good at. The Eagles went just 4-17 from deep and 26% from the field. And while there were some iffy calls against the Eagles, like missed goaltending calls, bad charges, and a weird inadvertent whistle that should’ve been a foul on CJ Felder, the offense was simply not good enough to win this game.

On the almost opposite end of the game-planning spectrum, the Seminoles went big and into the post early, exploiting the continued absence of Nik Popovic. At the half, they led points-in-the-paint by a 28-6 margin (which finished 46-18). Several of those were massive Koprovica dunks that got a packed senior-night crowd on its feet early and often. But it wasn’t just one player dominating BC’s frontcourt: nine different Seminoles got on the board in the first half en route to a 42-24 lead at halftime.

It didn’t get any better from there. To start the second half, FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton called a TO within 63 seconds to yell at his team for a bad foul. With Florida State on the verge of clinching that first ACC regular season title ever (and sole possession of that title when it was announced midway through the second half that Virginia had upset Louisville), the Seminoles were not about to let off the gas. Full court presses continued, and the game devolved into a crawl towards its inevitable finish (seriously. This game took 3+hours and was decided at halftime). At no point did BC really have a chance of getting back into this game, though it did itself no favors by playing a style of basketball that better resembled a pickup game than ACC play; the Eagles had 12 of their 19 turnovers in the second half.

All in all this was an ugly game that I can’t believe I watched the entirety of. Hopefully you tuned out, because it wasn’t worth it. I swear.