Zags no match for FSU depth
FLORIDA ST. 75 GONZAGA 60
LOS ANGELES — Sometimes less is not more.
In the case of Florida State, more is more.
The Seminoles, with a roster deeper than our country’s national debt, sends so many different players onto the court it makes it difficult for the opposition to keep track of who’s in the game at a given time.
Most teams in the NCAA Tournament shrink their bench to increase minutes for the best players.
Not Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton. He always likes to beat teams with numbers. Lots of numbers.
And in Thursday night’s West Region semifinal at the Staples Center, Hamilton’s ninth-seeded Seminoles, aided by their unrelenting depth, upset fourthseeded Gonzaga, 75-60, to advance to Saturday’s regional final against Michigan, which crushed Texas A&M-earlier in the night.
This is Florida State’s third Elite Eight appearance in school history, but first since 1993.
Thursday night marked the third consecutive game in which the Seminoles (23-11) defeated a higher-seeded team. Four days earlier, they upset top-seed Xavier with a furious 18-4 rally in the final minutes.
So, any thoughts of Florida State as a football-only school should be tabled for the moment.
Gonzaga, which is the quintessential basketball school, was playing in its fourth consecutive Sweet 16 and trying to advance to the Elite Eight for the third time in four years. The Zags (32-5) last year fell bitterly short of their desperate goal of winning their first national championship with a loss to North Carolina in the title game.
Credit gritty Florida State’s wear-you-- down depth for ending the Zags’ season this time. The Seminoles have 10 players who average at least 10 minutes per game. They have nine players who average at least 6.6 points per game.
Eleven Florida State players scored in Thursday night’s game. And only one, Terance Mann, scored in double-figures, with 18 points. Conversely, only six players scored for Gonzaga, which was led by Rui Hachimura’s 16 points and Zach Norvell Jr.’s 14.
“Usually you have seven or eight guys to deal with, but not 11,’’ Gonzaga coach Mark Few said before the game. “It’s impressive that they’ve been able to play that many. Usually what you see in college basketball is a tendency to kind of shrink your bench as you get farther along and deeper in the season and into the postseason.’’
When Hamilton was asked on Wednesday if he ever thought of shortening his bench in an effort to get more minutes for his better players, he said matter-of-factly: “No, I have not. I don’t think that’s who we are.
“I haven’t really thought about whether or not it’s going against the grain. That’s the way we’ve always played, even from when I was in the Big East [coaching Miami]. I felt that that was the best way for me to compete with the rich tradition of programs that are always loaded with the top seven, eight players who are some of the top players in the country.
“I just felt that it would be important for me to not worry about competing with the top five or six players, but let’s try to get a team of guys that would allow themselves to win by committee.’’
This time, Florida State’s committee was better than Gonzaga’s cachet as one of the nation’s elite teams — even when it looked like the Seminoles were running low on gas after an early burst that gave them a 23-11 lead.
Gonzaga, smartly switching to zone defense, climbed back into the game with a 15-0 run that turned the 12-point deficit into a 26-23 lead.
At that point, it looked like the cream was about to rise to the top. But Florida State made a strong statement at the end of the first half, outscoring the Zags 11-1 in the final 2:51, turning a 31-30 Gonzaga lead into a 41-32 Seminoles lead at the intermission. The exclamation point to the half was a Brandon Allen basket at the buzzer.
In the second half, the Seminoles withstood several Gonzaga runs (the Zags got as close as four points) and advanced.
With numbers.