Downright dominant: Seminoles find higher gear in string of recent wins
When the Florida State men's basketball program had to hit pause for two weeks because of COVID-19, the Seminoles had lost two of their last three games, were coming off a 10-point loss at Clemson and were struggling to find an identity early in the year.
They certainly seem to have found one now.
And it is dominant.
The Seminoles are 4-0 since that hiatus, and three of the four victories have been absolute blowouts, including Saturday's 80-61 win over Clemson.
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"We had the COVID break, and we had time to regroup mentally and physically and get ourselves right," junior forward RaiQuan Gray said after scoring 11 points in Saturday's win. "We just came together as a team. We're better than what we were playing before. We had a lot of slip-ups throughout some games. We lost games we shouldn't have lost.
"And we feel like we're the best team in the country, and we want to go out each night and prove it. That's kind of our mentality: Just marking everyone off the list that's next up. That's our mentality going forward."
The way the Seminoles have played over the last week and a half, it's hard to argue there are many teams better.
It's not just that they are on a four-game winning streak. That would be one thing.
But the Seminoles are on a four-game winning streak in which they've led for 147 minutes and 47 seconds of a possible 160 minutes of game action. They've trailed for exactly five minutes.
They've had double-digit leads in each game. The only close contest they've played during that stretch was a 7-point win over North Carolina.
In the other three games, FSU was up by 36 points against N.C. State, 24 against Louisville and then 38 against Clemson on Saturday.
The Seminoles wound up winning those three games by an average margin of 21.3 points.
On Saturday, head coach Leonard Hamilton said he was proud of the way his players came out to start the second half, playing like it was 0-0 even though they were up by 18 points.
"We haven't always been consistent with that," he said. "That shows that the team is maturing. They're holding each other accountable, they're calling each other out. We're holding each other accountable to the little things that we think is important: Deflections, steals, kills (three defensive stops in a row)."
They're also shooting lights out from the floor.
That's been pretty important, too.
The Seminoles have made 41 of 83 3-point attempts (49.4 percent) during the four-game streak. They're shooting 54.3 percent from the floor overall and have made 54 of 62 from the free-throw line (87.1 percent).
And other than one run Louisville made early in the second half on Monday, when Florida State has gotten a big lead on a team, it has been able to maintain its advantage throughout.
Even when the starters are on the bench.
"We just have guys coming in and out of the game," sophomore center Balsa Koprivica said. "Every time we sub guys in, whoever is going into the game is ready to go. So, that's how we've built our leads up and we continue to play throughout the game."