Leonard Hamilton identifies what Florida State must learn from loss vs. Clemson

The Florida State Seminoles were confident heading into their game against Clemson. After all, head coach Leonard Hamilton had led his team to five straight ACC wins going into the game. Still, the Seminoles fell short and suffered an ACC loss.

After the game, Hamilton praised how Clemson was able to execute throughout the game and emphasized that this was a learning opportunity for the Seminoles.

“I thought Clemson did a really good job of not allowing us to get them out of rhythm offensively,” Leonard Hamilton said. “From a defensive standpoint, they executed the gameplan. We’ve been very disruptive up until today, getting deflections and steals and not allowing our opponents to be comfortable running their offense, and that has worked well for us.”

Clemson earned a massive rebounding advantage throughout the game, with 39 to Florida State’s 22 on the game. Only three of the Seminoles’ rebounds came on the offensive glass. On top of that, the Tigers out-shot the Seminoles, after shooting 51% from the field and 41.2% from three-point range. Florida State only shot 40.7% from the field and 22.2% from three-point range.

“Today, we just didn’t quite seem to have the focus to be as disruptive as you have to be in the ACC in order to be successful. We need those extra deflections, we need those extra steals, so we allow ourselves to get out in transition. You need to be able to contest shots and get long rebounds and today we were not able to do [that].”

It was a rough day shooting from the perimeter for the Seminoles, only making four of 18 attempted shots. That was disappointing to Leonard Hamilton, who feels that Florida State can be better from deep but emphasized that it takes work.

“I went into the season thinking that we would be a pretty good perimeter shooting team and I still think we’re capable of [that], but I think we’re still struggling to get any kind of ball movement and ball reversal that’s necessary to what we call break up the concrete, not allow defense to compound themselves in the lane, and today I didn’t think we moved the ball well enough to create indecision on the defense.”

Ultimately, Hamilton knows that there is plenty to learn from this game. As long as it takes those lessons, Florida State should be able to have success moving forward in ACC play.

“Hopefully, what we can do is learn from this game. Learn that in order for us to be successful there are certain things we have to do on a consistent basis in order for us to win by closing out with our hands up, taking away vision, getting deflections, forcing steals, forcing contested shots, and forcing people to miss so that we get long rebounds,” Hamilton said.

“Today, Clemson was able to execute their system, get the ball where they wanted to, and that was a very hard fought loss for us.”

Florida State will have the chance to learn and improve going into its next game. That will come on Tuesday on the road against Syracuse.