Leonard Hamilton calls out Florida State's Achilles heel in loss to North Carolina

North Carolina got a much-needed win against Florida State on Monday, staying alive in their race to make the NCAA Tournament. Not the best performance from the Seminoles despite shooting the ball well. For Leonard Hamilton, one glance at the stat sheet makes it obvious why his team lost the game.

“It’s obvious what our Achilles heal was tonight,” Hamilton said during his postgame press conference. “Our inability to keep them off the boards. In all our research and preparation for the game, Carolina had not been one of the better rebounding teams in the league this year.

“But our inability to take advantage of that was obvious because it didn’t fare well for us. Getting 24 points on second-chance points — a lot of that was because they had 13 offensive rebounds.”

Hamilton is right about UNC not being a great rebounding team inside the ACC. While they are in the top half, the Tar Heels average 36.7 boards per game — good enough for No. 7 when compared to conference opponents. They rank even lower when looking specifically at offensive rebounding, ranking at 14th with 10 a night.

North Carolina was under their average from a total rebounds perspective but three over on the offensive glass. As Hamilton mentioned, the 13 rebounds were a major part of 24 second-chance points. Ven-Allen Lubin had three offensive rebounds of his own, outnumbering all but two of the 11 Florida State players’ total rebounds.

Not too many games are going to be won with those kinds of numbers.

“When you look at the stats, any time you play, you’re happy with 54% field goal percentage, 50% from three,” Hamilton said. “75% from the free throw line, you’d feel that you had a pretty good game. But defensively, that’s another story. When you cause them to miss shots, you got to come away with your fair share of the offensive rebounds they’re trying to get in order to be successful. Tonight, that was the biggest challenge that we had. We didn’t come away with the offensive rebounds.”

Hamilton will have to spend the rest of this week challenging his team to improve their rebounding. Next on the schedule is Duke, ranking No. 2 in rebounding but No. 1 in rebounding margin. Simply put, they are likely the best rebounding team in the ACC.

If there is any kind of chance of Florida State pulling off an upset Saturday, performing better on the glass than they did against North Carolina will be a must.