Seminoles set to face hot-shooting Colorado in NCAA Round of 32

INDIANAPOLIS -- They both won their first-round NCAA Tournament games.

That's about the only similarity you can find between the victory the Florida State Seminoles enjoyed on Saturday and the one the Colorado Buffaloes had earlier in the day.

Florida State, the No. 4 seed, was in a one-point game with five minutes to go against UNC-Greensboro. And the the Seminoles didn't hit a single 3-pointer in the 64-54 win.

Colorado, the No. 5 seed, was up by 30 against Georgetown in the second half. And the Buffaloes hit a season-high 16 3-pointers (on 25 attempts) in a 96-73 victory.

D'Shawn Shwartz and Jabari Walker hit five 3-pointers apiece for Colorado, which also got 12 points and 13 assists from star guard McKinley Wright IV.

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"When you look back at their tendencies," FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton said on Sunday, "they're capable of having a good shooting day like they had, but they're also capable of having a shooting game like we did (on Saturday)."

Hamilton then pointed out, once again, that the Seminoles led the ACC in 3-point shooting percentage during the regular season. Meanwhile, Colorado was in the middle of the pack in the Pac-12 for shooting, and had 10 games this season where they shot under 30 percent from beyond the arc.

The Buffaloes also had six games where they shot above 50 percent from 3, so it's hard to know exactly what you're going to get from them from the perimeter.

It's easy to know what you're going to get from Wright, though.

The senior is one of the best point guards in the country. He's had eight games this year where he's scored over 20 points, and he has almost a 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio. He's been an All-Conference selection three times.

"He's a poised guy, an older guy, a mature guy," FSU redshirt junior RaiQuan Gray said. "Not too many things rattle him. So, we're just trying to figure out a way to affect the game and bother him a little bit. ... He's a great player. He'll probably be bale to handle whatever we throw at him, but we'll definitely try our best to rattle him a little bit."

Hamilton said Wright reminded him a bit of the last point guard his team faced in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

"I don't know if he's at Ja Morant's level, but he's awfully close," Hamilton said, in reference to the former Murray State and current NBA star who the Seminoles wound up beating in the 2019 tourney. "He's a handful, there's no doubt about that. But you have to be careful to give a certain player so much attention that you open up opportunities for everyone else."

Wright is also shooting 84.2 percent from the free-throw line. Which isn't all that extraordinary for Colorado, which currently leads the country in free-throw percentage at 82.2 percent.

So, not only must Florida State play tight on the ball against Wright and the Buffaloes, but the Seminoles must do it without fouling.

"Every game we go out and try to play defense without fouling," Hamilton said. "Some games we do, some games we don't."

He also said that if you concentrate too much on taking away the 3 from Colorado, then you can open up gaps and driving lanes for Wright to exploit and get to the basket.

"You can't catch every rain drop," Hamilton said. "You've got to be on point and be able to make an adjustment."

And at the end of 40 minutes, hope your season is still alive.

"At this point in March, it's not about 20-point wins or 30-point wins or stuff like that," Gray said. "We want to win by half a point, one point ... as long as we win."

FSU and Colorado will square off on Monday at 7:45 p.m. ET. The game will be played at Indiana Farmers Coliseum and air on TBS.

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