The Florida State men's basketball team didn't feel the sting of defeat much last season. The Seminoles, who won the outright regular-season ACC championship, only lost five times all year.
But one of those losses was to the team they'll be hosting on Wednesday night as No. 20 FSU (1-0) takes on Indiana (3-1) at the Tucker Center as part of the ACC-Big 10 Challenge.
The game was originally slated to be played at 9:15 p.m. ET, but was moved to 7:15 after the Louisville-Wisconsin game was postponed. It will air on ESPN.
"I think they have probably worked through some of the things that I'm just now dealing with," FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton said of the Hoosiers, who will be playing their fifth game this season. "That's a pretty good situation, going on the road, playing the Challenge with a lot of film work, a lot of corrections, a lot of development just from the mental aspect of being comfortable."
The Seminoles, meanwhile, have played just one game this year -- the lowest total of any team in the ACC. Eleven conference schools have played at least three games already, and five have played four games.
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That means Florida State has just 40 minutes of actual game film of itself to watch, and that came against a North Florida team that was playing without its leading scorer.
"We've got to find a way in the next couple of days to accelerate the learning curve," Hamilton said. "It's obvious we have a long way to go. Not with chemistry but just being in sync."
Florida State easily dispatched of the Ospreys last week, leading by double-figures the entire second half. But it was far from a crisp performance. The Seminoles were just 7 of 24 from 3-point range and shot 46 percent from the floor overall.
They also allowed North Florida to finish the game by making eight of its last nine 3-point attempts.
"There are so many things that we are not efficient in that concerns me with the development of where we are," Hamilton said.
He said he's glad the Seminoles didn't elect to play in early season tournament like Indiana did, because he felt it was better for them to work on themselves during that time than prepare for multiple opponents.
But now that means his team is about to play three games in six days against Indiana, Florida and Georgia Tech. That's a big step up in competition, especially for a team that features four first-year players.
"This is where we are," he said. "It's right on top of us. I'm sure I'm not the only (coach) in the country that's saying the same thing, that we're not where we would like to be."
And as he has said repeatedly in the build-up to this season, Hamilton knows there are going to be some ups and downs.
The offseason and preseason were both altered by the coronavirus pandemic. There were no exhibition games. The season opener against Gardner-Webb was moved back a month.
And now, after one single tune-up game, he's facing a 3-1 Indiana team that features one of the best forwards in the country in Trayce Jackson-Davis, who is averaging 21.5 points and 7 rebounds per game.
"Jackson-Davis is a man child," Hamilton said. "He reminds me a lot of Bernard James. Left-handed, strong, finishes well around the basket. He's a mature, confident guy. He's a handful. I haven't seen anybody really keep him from dong what he does.
"I don't know if I ever coached anybody in all my coaching career that had 13 double-doubles in a season. And he did that as a freshman."
Jackson-Davis already had a 26-point, 11-rebound effort in the Hoosiers' season-opening win over Tennessee Tech. He also had a 31-point outburst in a 16-point win over Stanford at the Maui Invitational.
He scored 15 points and grabbed eight rebounds last year in Indiana's 80-64 win over Florida State in Bloomington. That also happened to be the only game FSU lost by more than five points last season.
Not that Hamilton is trying to use revenge as any sort of motivator. He said he's just trying to concentrate on the day to day, working to figure out his team, trying to use these next two non-conference games as a teaching tool for the Seminoles as they embark on what promises to be the strangest college basketball regular season of his lifetime.
"I'm not making any excuses," Hamilton said. "I'm excited about my team. ... I'm just trying to be honest. Our intentions are to go win games. That's who we are. That's where we are. This team -- I'm just foolish enough to think we can be pretty good.
"Physically, the pieces are there. It will be interesting to see how fast we develop."
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