Miami Hurricanes Basketball: Three Things You Need to Know Before Miami Takes on Florida St.

What do you think of when the Miami Hurricanes take on the Florida St. Seminoles?

Intensity? Hatred? Maybe wide right?

All of the above are true, but most of all in this historic rivalry we can always expect a close finish no matter the sport or where the two teams lie in the standings. With a desperate Seminoles squad coming to Coral Gables this Saturday for another battle with the Canes on the hardwood, don’t expect any of that to change.

Florida St. really, really needs a win Saturday.

The Seminoles come into this matchup against the Hurricanes with a modest 10-4 overall record, but are in a bit of trouble after their 0-2 start to conference play.

A 16-point loss to North Carolina in their last game can be excused, especially when Brice Johnson goes off with 39 points and 23 rebounds, but their nine-point loss to Clemson to begin their ACC slate really hurt for Florida St.  Now in the midst of a five game stretch that includes games against four teams ranked in the Top 25 (Miami, Virginia, Louisville and Pittsburgh), the Seminoles have little room for error.

Leonard Hamilton’s team does have two nice wins against Florida and VCU in the non-conference, but the Noles have been unable to beat any other teams ranked higher than 120th in the KenPom the rest of the season. With that in mind, Florida St. will have to beef up their resume with wins against teams like Miami in the ACC to have any shot at making it in March. We saw that exact same situation with the Miami team from last year and that desperation led to performances like taking Virginia to double-overtime and humiliating Duke at Cameron Indoor.

In a rivalry game with the Seminoles really needing a win, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Florida St. come out with all they’ve got Saturday night.

Leonard Hamilton has built his success with defense, but this team can really fill it up.

Whether at Oklahoma St., Miami or Florida St., Leonard Hamilton has built his coaching career on defense. With the type of offensive talent the Seminoles have this season though, that’s all changed.

The Seminoles possess three scorers averaging at least 12.4 points a game and the lowest average of those three comes from Xavier Rathan-Mayes. Yes, that’s the same Xavier Rathan-Mayes that scored 30 points in four minutes against the Canes last season.

The new leading scoring duo for Florida St. is a pair of highly-touted freshman that have lived up to the high expectations set for them in Tallahassee through the first 14 games of the season. 6’7” Dwayne Bacon, who was the No. 14 recruit according to ESPN last year, comes into Saturday averaging 17.2 points a game while the No. 28 recruit from last year, 6’5” Malik Beasley is currently averaging 17.0 points a game.

With three legitimate top scoring threats, it’ll be interesting to see how Coach Jim Larranaga and his staff go about trying to shut down the Florida St. offense that has averaged 82.1 points per game and has yet to score below 70 points in a game this season. If that does fail, like it did for North Carolina this past Monday who gave up 90 but scored 106, the Hurricanes best option may be to outscore them and we could see this game become a real shootout.

Miami has to avoid another sluggish start.

While Miami ended up winning their last two games by double-digits, their performances were less than convincing, especially in the first half. As we discussed above, this Florida St. team is going to try and jump on Miami as quickly as possible Saturday night and if the Canes start like they have in their last two games, the Canes might not be able to pull themselves out of yet another hole.

Getting Sheldon McClellan and Angel Rodriguez going right out of the gate will be really important for a Canes team that has relied on Ja’Quan Newton to bail them out the last two games. It’ll also be crucial for the Hurricanes to find their stroke from the outside which went completely missing in a 3-for-25 effort against Syracuse.

In the end though, this game will probably come down to some clutch shot-making down the stretch. I mean the last three meeting between these teams have been decided by an average of three points. A rivalry doesn’t get much closer than that.

If the Hurricanes can pull out the victory over the Seminoles (ranked 44th in the KenPom), they would improve to 13-1 and would also hold four wins over teams currently in the KenPom Top 50. A victory would also give the Canes some momentum before a huge clash at No. 4 Virginia this coming Tuesday.

You can look at the records coming into this rivalry and think you might see one side favored heavily over the other, but no matter what these teams always seem to fight until the last second. I won’t be surprised to see that again come Saturday at 5:00 p.m.