For the second day in a row, the Florida State men's basketball team used a suffocating, swarming defense to race out to a big halftime lead.
And for the second day in a row, the Seminoles cruised to a victory, blowing out Missouri 81-58 in Monday's championship game of the Jacksonville Classic at North Florida University.
Florida State (4-1) appeared to take advantage of a tired and not-nearly-as-deep Tigers squad, which had to go to overtime on Sunday night to beat SMU in their first game in the tournament.
"I thought our guys gave tremendous effort," FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton said. "We had more guys asking to come out of the game tonight for rest than we've had anytime during the year. Which means they're giving tremendous effort offensively and defensively."
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It was evident early on that FSU's constant pressure and constant substitutions were going to be too much for Missouri to handle. Malik Osborne scored eight points early, on two 3-pointers and a dunk, as the Seminoles continually turned Missouri turnovers into points on the other end.
Florida State raced out to a double-digit lead right out of the gate and never really looked back, taking a 43-23 advantage into the locker room at halftime.
The Seminoles were led in scoring by senior Anthony Polite, who had 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting from the floor and 2-of-3 from 3-point range.
Fellow senior RayQuan Evans, who was playing with a broken heart after learning his brother passed away on Sunday night, had eight points and a game-high six assists.
"It's one of the best performances I've ever seen in my coaching career," said Hamilton, who got choked up talking about the guard after the game. "For him to be courageous enough, to love his teammates, and in honor of his brother he wanted to go out and play tonight.
"And there's not very many guys that can do that. He was extremely hurt. He was disappointed. But he said he wanted to represent his family and his brother, and he wanted to represent his team -- the brothers who he has come to love. And there are Seminoles around. There are true Seminoles. But then there's whatever kind of Seminole Ray Evans is. For him to step up and want to do that tonight, not very many people can do that and play as well as he played tonight."
Freshman Matthew Cleveland, who led the team with 13 points in the win over Loyola-Marymount on Sunday night, had 10 off the bench for the Seminoles. Kentucky transfer Cam'Ron Fletcher added 12.
Osborne finished with 10 points for Florida State, which shot a staggering 61 percent from the floor in the win and 42 percent from 3-point range.
But many of those points came because of FSU's ball-hawking defense, which forced 17 turnovers that led to 24 Seminole points.
Missouri, like Loyola-Marymount the night before, shot less than 40 percent for the game, finishing with a shooting percentage of 38.2 percent.
The Seminoles return home to play Boston University on Wednesday night at the Tucker Center.
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