ATLANTA – Many times, coaches and members of the media talk about a team’s early schedule paying off later in the season. Oftentimes, this refers to the strength of a team’s schedule or going on the road. While Florida State played some good teams and went on the road, there’s a lot more they did early that appears to be paying off late in the season and was evidenced by their 64-62 win over Georgia Tech on Thursday.
The Seminoles, who had taken a hit in past years for playing a soft non-conference schedule, went on the road several times this year. They also had some close calls, which can be bad in some cases, but also good if you pull them out. Florida State did the latter, pulling out close wins at Jacksonville (59-57), at La Salle (65-61), against California in Las Vegas (80-77), at home against Florida (57-55) and at Georgia State (62-57) in about the first month of play.
All told, the Seminoles are 10-3 in games decided by five points or less. Although two of those losses came in the last four games of the regular season, by and large this team has come out on top when it has had to make a play late. Teams don’t set out to be in that situation, but it happens, especially with the competitive landscape and all the things that can happen in a game.
That situation faced the Seminoles on Friday in the ACC quarterfinals against Georgia Tech. As they had all season, the Yellow Jackets battled right to the end and were not going to be an easy out. With 29 seconds left, Zachery Peacock hit a fade-away jumper to put Georgia Tech up 62-61 and in position to pull off their second big win in as many days.
That’s when Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton went with a play that he said had four different options depending on the defense. Everyone probably thought Toney Douglas would be the one to make the play, but in the end, the player who got the ball was well-traveled guard Derwin Kitchen. He drove the baseline and made a layup, then made the free throw for the conventional three-point play.
At that point, it seemed all the experience of making plays late in these games paid dividends.
“We didn’t blow people out by large margins because we had six first-year players we had to get some playing time,” Hamilton said. “We played a lot of games on the road, more than in the past. We felt that would give our players a chance to grow up a little bit and I think that worked in our favor. We played a lot of close games early on and we were able to pull them out.”
Hamilton can see the team being more poised in late-game situations. Besides winning close games, they have closed out others where they had a small lead that got stretched late because of free throws and defense. Add in how they practice them, and the situation they were faced with on Friday was not new.
“We always work on situations like that in practice because in the league we’re playing all the games will be close,” said Douglas, who led the Seminoles with 25 points on 11-16 shooting. “It worked out for us tonight.”
With that, Florida State has reached the semifinals of the ACC Tournament for the first time since its inaugural season in the conference (1992-93). They aren’t planning to stop there, but it’s one more example of the early schedule paying off for this team in March.
