The No. 21 Florida State Seminoles (18-7) are on the road today in Raleigh, North Carolina, to take on the North Carolina State Wolfpack (18-8). After starting the ACC conference season at 7-1 (including a school record 7 game ACC win streak), the Noles dropped a heartbreaker to in Chestnut Hill to the Boston College Eagles. Since then, the Seminoles have defeated Miami in a rivalry game, and most recently stole a victory versus the Virginia Tech in which they in no way should have won.
Regardless, this basketball team owns a 9-2 ACC record and a clear shot at making the NCAA tournament for the 4th year in a row. With that said, FSU needs to take each of their remaining games at face value. The only game they should be thinking about right now is the NC State game which they're playing today. They can start thinking about their rematch against Duke at 3:30 when today's game is over.
North Carolina State is a different team than the Virginia Tech team they were able to forget about for 38 minutes and start playing with 2 minutes to go. This Wolfpack team is coming off their own game on Thursday where they squandered their own double digit lead against Duke. It will be interesting to see how NCSU responds in this game. Will they be hungry and play with an intensity to actually finish this game? Or will their attention be on Thursday night when they had the win in their hand and just couldn't hold on. How they respond will be up to North Carolina State Head Coach Mark Gottfried.
Florida State's offense looks to rebound after only putting up only 48 points against Virginia Tech. The leading scorer in that game was Ian Miller. He had 11 points off the bench. Michael Snaer had 9 points with the last 3 points seemingly being worth more than the previous 6. The next highest scorers for FSU were Jeff Peterson and Okaro White with 5 points each off the bench.
North Carolina State's team is pretty evenly matched on the offensive side of things with all 5 of their starters averaging double figures. Junior Scott Wood leads the teamwith 13.2 ppg, but Sophomore C.J. Leslie is not far behind averaging 13.0 ppg. Junior Richard Howell is the man to watch close to the basket. He is averaging 11.3 ppg and 9.2 rpg.
This game will only be televised on the ACC network through Fox, or ESPN3, if you are so lucky to get that. NC State is favored by a point and a half in their own building, and with that said I'm going to hold off on a prediction. I can't really figure this team out. They can keep up with any team in division 1 basketball, but you never know which team will show up until the game starts.
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