Leonard Hamilton shares differences between halves against Syracuse

Florida State was probably feeling pretty good about the first half performance it had put in on the road at Syracuse, taking a six-point lead into the break. A putrid second half later and head coach Leonard Hamilton was sitting at the podium for his press conference, explaining how Syracuse befuddled the Seminole offense and outscored Florida State 47-32 in the final 20 minutes.

Hamilton highlighted two correlated factors: Florida State wasn’t as confident and crisp in attacking the 2-3 zone defense in the second half, plus they shot 25.7% from 3 on the night. While defense had kept the Seminoles it for a half, their stagnating offense eventually cost them.

“Our lack of execution against the zone,” Hamilton said. “I think that was — we were not in sync. Plus, we’ve had those nights, all teams have them, when you’re just not knocking down perimeter shots.”

After taking a quick look at the stat sheet, Hamilton saw the final figures: 9-of-35 on 3s.

“Wow, we were 9-of-35? We have just not been that kind of shooting team,” Hamilton said. “We’ve been a little bit inconsistent but against the zone defense, you would think that we would’ve had better spacing and had better shots.”

Hamilton did give the Syracuse defense a lot of credit for the way they paid close attention to closing out hard on Darin Green Jr., a 40% 3-point shooter for Florida State.

Against the Orange, Green went 5-of-17 from deep, and made his lone two-point attempt. Syracuse managed to do this without committing a single foul to send Green to the free-throw line.

“I do think that they did a great job when the ball was thrown to Green. I thought they did a great job of hurry up and getting to him so he didn’t feel as comfortable,” Hamilton said.