Florida State isn’t bad, but its strategy is.
Al Thorton of the Seminoles is, I think, the ACC MVP. Clemson had nobody who could check him. Yet the Tigers consistently prevented him from touching the ball. How? The Seminoles guards refused to give it to him.
Thornton, 6-foot-8, had to go outside to get the ball. Maybe the guards thought he was one of them. So they’d give it to him 20 feet from the hoop, and he would pump and penetrate, drive the baseline for a dunk or pop from the outside.
It wasn’t as if the Tigers were committing so many defenders to him that others were open. Thornton, a senior with a great mid-range NBA game, would post up, put up a hand and watch the guards shoot.
Thornton took 16 shots from the field and made nine. Had the Seminoles gone inside, he would have scored 40.
Comments