After closing the regular season on a high note with three straight wins, the Florida State men’s basketball team made the trip to Brooklyn for the start of the 2022 ACC Tournament.

The Seminoles take on Syracuse at noon ET Wednesday on ESPN in the No. 8-9 seed game, with the winner scheduled to face No. 1 seed Duke in the quarterfinals Thursday. FSU and Syracuse will battle for the third time this year, having split the first two meetings.

Florida State comes in having upset Virginia and Notre Dame and then cruising past N.C. State on Senior Day weekend, 89-76.

After practice on Tuesday morning, FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton reflected back on the satisfying win over the Wolfpack, saying it was the Seminoles' highest-graded game defensively all year long.

“A lot of the things we have been trying to teach for our young guys, I thought we executed very well from a defensive standpoint,” Hamilton said. “We had to concentrate on containing the dribble because they drove to the basket very well. That was our highest grade, so that was somewhat encouraging as we move into the ACC Tournament.”

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To continue its recent run of success, FSU will have to slow down a very dependable Syracuse top four.

That quartet includes leading scorer Buddy Boeheim (19.3 points per game), guard Joseph Girard (13.4), and senior forwards Cole Swider (13.4) and Jimmy Boeheim (13.3). Together, they account for over 80 percent of the team’s scoring, and each player started all 31 games for the Orange in 2021-22.

“They have four guys on the floor that all can score 20 points. So you don’t have any relief at any position,” Hamilton said. “They are a dangerous team that scores a lot of points. … That’s a very dangerous offensive team, which challenges every one of our defensive principles.”

However, Syracuse does enter play in Brooklyn on a cold streak, albeit against the better squads in the ACC. The Orange have lost four straight games, with each coming to one of the conference’s top four seeds -- Notre Dame, Duke, North Carolina and Miami.

For both FSU and Syracuse, a run to the ACC Tournament championship would be necessary to earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament. But while the 'Noles would love to make that happen, Hamilton said they can't even contemplate that right now.

Their entire focus is on knocking off the Orange.

“We don’t have a choice. We haven’t earned the right to look past anybody,” Hamilton said. “We haven’t earned the right to be cocky or overconfident. We realize we have to be respectful of every opponent. We’ve just got to get the first one. …

“We can’t worry about the Tournament, we can’t worry about down the road. We just have to stay in the moment, make sure to continue to focus with the game plan. Let’s go try and get victory one first.”

Once again this week, an FSU player took home the 2021-22 ACC Sixth Man of the Year Award when freshman guard Matt Cleveland was voted the top bench player in the conference by a wide margin.

Cleveland was the fourth straight winner for FSU, joining Scottie Barnes (2020-21), forward Patrick Williams (2019-20) and forward Mfiondu Kabengele (2018-19).

“It means a lot, just the ability to be able to put on an FSU jersey every day and go out and play,” Cleveland said. “Represent the culture and brand that Florida State has built. It’s a blessing to keep the legacy of the sixth man going on.”

During a Zoom call with the media, the highly touted freshman discussed the joy of celebrating the honor with his parents, and he credited them and his FSU teammates with playing key roles in his success.

Cleveland added that throughout the year, the biggest strides he made were in his own inner-confidence in his game.

“It says a lot about the culture and confidence that the coaches put in everyone in this program, from starters to the Green Team (scout team),” Cleveland said. “It speaks on the culture that is built here to be able to allow me to go out and be able to play the way I am off the bench.”

When he was asked about Cleveland's honor, Hamilton said it represents the way the Seminoles run their program.

The veteran head coach pointed out that he always admired the great Boston Celtics dynasty of the Bill Russell and Red Auerbach era, one in which Boston utilized a deep bench on the way to 11 NBA championships in 13 seasons.

“It says that there’s a buy-in into our culture and our system. It says that the sixth, seventh, eighth man on our team knows that they are just as much of a part of the scenario,” Hamilton said. “That (Boston's approach) always impressed me. I always said if I got to be a head coach, I would want a big rotation.”

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