Before he renewed acquaintances with reporters he knew in his tour of duty as Miami coach more than a decade ago, Leonard Hamilton took a breath.
“I’m exhausted,” Hamilton said from his seat at the front of the press conference Wednesday night. “I feel like I played. And I’m a long way from playing.”
Maybe so. As a coach, however, the 65-year-old is in excellent form. Hamilton pulled all the right strings, helping his Seminoles emerge with a 63-53 win over rival UM.
Hamilton threw a curveball at his counterpart, UM coach Jim Larranaga, by opening the second half playing a zone. That was the same defense Larranaga installed a month ago, which spurred UM to last week’s win at North Carolina and a near-win at No. 2 Syracuse.
“It kind of caught us off-guard,” Larranaga said, using the same words Hamilton used earlier in the week to describe UM’s recent switch.
Bolstered by the defensive change, the Seminoles (12-4, 3-1 ACC) shot nearly 62 percent in the second half. They closed with a 13-2 run, taking full advantage of their size and scoring down the stretch.
FSU broke a 51-all tie with 3:48 left, scoring 13 points in a row until Hurricanes guard Rion Brown dunked with 25 seconds remaining.
“We didn’t have very much choice,” Hamilton said of the change. “They were destroying our man-to-man defense in the first half. I thought our zone couldn’t have been any worse than our man-to-man.”
With 7-foot-3 sophomore Boris Bojanovsky (11 points) patrolling the middle, guards Devon Bookert (11) and Aaron Thomas (12) operated from the outside. UM (9-7, 1-3 ACC) didn’t have the interior size to match, especially after 7-footer Tonye Jekiri fouled out with 2:09 to play.
UM outrebounded FSU 21-20 in the first half, but lost that battle 37-29 overall. FSU outscored UM 24-16 inside.
One Canes big man had an outstanding game. Six-foot-10 graduate forward Donnavan Kirk scored a career-high 21 points, going 9-of-12 from the floor. Despite hitting four threes all season, Kirk was 3-for-3. He also had all four of UM’s blocks and five rebounds, including four on the offensive glass.
Miami took its largest lead at 10:09 left thanks to Brown (21 points), who nailed a three with a hand in his face, then banked in another from about 26 feet to put UM up 43-38.
But the Seminoles quieted most of the 7,413 fans, the largest crowd of the season at BankUnited Center, with a strong finish. An Ian Miller 3-pointer put the Noles up by six with 2:09 to play, and UM missed several late chances.
Against a Florida State defense ranking third in the nation in effective field goal percentage, Miami shot 35.6 percent. However, the Hurricanes’ defense kept pace in the first half. Florida State got decent looks against Miami’s zone, but shot just 8-of-25. Miami had three steals in the first five minutes and led 28-24 at halftime.
Scoring remains an issue for the Canes. Kirk and Brown combined for nearly 80 percent of UM’s scoring. Aside from those two, UM was 4-for-31 from the floor.
“The last three-and-a-half minutes, they had a lot of different ways to score and we didn’t,” Larranaga said.
Hamilton’s team has a Saturday rematch at Virginia, which upset FSU 62-50 on Jan. 4 in Tallahassee. The lessons from that loss, and Wednesday’s win, give the Seminoles plenty of confidence.
“Road victories are hard to come by in the ACC,” Hamilton said. “I’m thankful.”
