Florida State earns first ACC victory with rout of winless Louisville
The Florida State men’s basketball team had been playing better of late, clearly showing signs of progress during what has been the most difficult start of Leonard Hamilton’s career.
And on Saturday, the Seminoles got to enjoy the fruits of that improvement because they got to welcome the Louisville Cardinals, arguably the worst Power 5 team in the country, to the Tucker Center for their first home conference game of the season.
The result was a 75-53 rout that improved Florida State’s record to 2-9 overall and 1-1 in the ACC. Louisville is now 0-9 and 0-2 in the league.
Even after losing leading rebounder Cam’Ron Fletcher for the season late in last Saturday’s narrow loss at No. 3 Virginia, Florida State continued its trend of solid play that started with a close loss to No. 5 Purdue as part of the ACC/Big 10 Challenge.
The Seminoles controlled Saturday’s game from the start.
Caleb Mills scored nine quick points in the first half and the FSU defense — led by four first-half blocks from Naheem McLeod — held Louisville to just 24 points in the first 20 minutes as the Seminoles took a 36-24 lead into the locker room.
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Florida State committed only three turnovers in the first half and forced nine by the Cardinals.
And the lead continued to grow in the second half as the Seminoles got countless easy looks at the rim.
Mills finished with 16 points, and freshman center Cameron Corhen had a career-high 15. McLeod finished with a career-high six blocks, and Matthew Cleveland had 12 points — including a highlight-reel dunk in the second half — and eight rebounds as FSU led by double-digits for the entire second half. Florida State pushed its lead to as high as 24 with a couple of minutes to go.
Louisville shot just 37 percent from the floor and 33 percent from 2-point range as the FSU defense made it hard for the Cardinals to do much of anything inside the arc. More than half (27) of Louisville’s final total came on nine 3-point makes.
But those jumpers weren’t nearly enough as FSU picked up a much-needed second win of the season.
The walk-ons even got to play the final two minutes for the Seminoles, who play again on Tuesday night at home against USC-Upstate.
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