Miami Drops 65-63 Contest to Florida State
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – The University of Miami men’s basketball team fell to Florida State, 65-63, Tuesday night inside the Watsco Center.
Florida State (8-11, 1-5 ACC) held a three-point lead, 13-10, after the first six minutes of the game before the Hurricanes (15-4, 4-2) went on a 9-0 run spurred by Tre Donaldson’s seven points. The Seminoles cut the lead down to two and took a 38-37 lead into the half as Kobe Magee hit a 3-pointer as time expired.
Malik Reneau scored the first basket in the second half to put the Canes ahead before Florida State regained the lead. The two teams battled throughout the half with the Seminoles’ lead never getting larger than five.
The Hurricanes’ defense came up clutch late in the game, forcing a Florida State shot clock violation that led to a Reneau layup to cut the lead to one with just under a minute. Miami then forced a missed 3-pointer and tied the game with 21 seconds as Reneau converted one of his two free throw attempts.
Robert McCray V earned a trip to the charity stripe on the final offensive position of the game, making both free throws to put FSU ahead for good.
Shelton Henderson led the way for the Hurricanes, scoring 18 points while hauling in eight rebounds. Ernest Udeh Jr. nearly had a double-double as the senior registered 10 points and nine rebounds while Reneau added 16 and Donaldson registered 11.
Miami returns to action Saturday as they travel to take on Syracuse at 2 p.m. The game can be seen on ACC Network and heard locally on the airwaves on 560 AM WQAM.
POSTGAME QUOTES
Head Coach Jai Lucas
On what needs to be addressed moving forward…
“Exactly what I talked about, our urgency and our desperation. If we do that, I think everything else will take care of it. We know, and we’ve always known, how people will guard us once they’ve scouted us and once they see it. And nothing’s going to change with that, but our pace with how we play is what’s supposed to offset it. And right now we’re just kind of sluggishly getting through our stuff. We have to change it.”
On the challenges in his first year as head coach…
“My biggest challenge started the day I got the job. You know, building the program I wanted, and hiring the staff. We’re still a young program. We’re still learning and growing together. And this loss, and part of this right here is part of building our culture. You know, we got new guys, although they’ve played a bunch of college basketball, we’ve never done it together. So this is a lesson and a teaching point, and we just gotta move on and try not to learn this lesson too many more times.”
Shelton Henderson, Forward, Freshman
On what went wrong in the second half…
“I think everything just leads to the defensive end. We can do whatever we want on offense, but if we don’t go down there and get some stops, the games are not going to end in our favor. So I just think moving on forward, we’ve got to get back to our identity and fill the ball in those gaps and just be more desperate. Coach Lucas talked about being more desperate to get these dubs, which we have to focus more on.”
On areas of defensive improvement…
“Just playing team defense, running the ball and just being able to compete more. I feel like we make things too easy for the other guys, and we go down on offense, it’s not easy for us, and we just got to be able to compete.”
Ernest Udeh Jr., Center, Senior
On the message from Coach Lucas after the game…
“Just moving forward, obviously, you know, the game didn’t end how we wanted it to. But the last thing we’re gonna do, and the worst thing that we can do is obviously sit on it. We got to move on to Syracuse and obviously, we’re gonna watch the film, look at our mistakes, see things we could have done better, and just go from there.”
On what fell short in the loss…
“I felt like, you know, everything that we talked about, everything that we worked on in practice leading up to this game, we fell short in all those areas. Honestly, it’s obviously frustrating when you come up with a loss in some games. You know, you can make mistakes and still win. One thing I just say to my guys in the locker room is just, we got to care. I mean, no one doesn’t not care. I love all my guys to death. You know, we play this game for a reason. That reason is to win. I mean, obviously when you don’t win, you know, you get frustrated. We can get down on yourself. But just like I said, you know, we got to move forward and focus on Syracuse, because, again, we’re a great team. I didn’t come here for no reason, you know, Shell (Shelton) didn’t come in here for just any reason. So again, just we got to play the game of basketball day in and day out, and just move forward.”
