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Defense The Key As Noles Edge Gators

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By COREY CLARK

The Tallahassee Democrat

Published: December 8, 2008

TALLAHASSEE - The Florida State Seminoles shot 31 percent from the floor, leading scorer Toney Douglas scored two points - 17.3 below his per-game average - and the No. 23 Florida Gators went on a 19-4 run in the second half.

None of it mattered.

Hey, if you have a team's number, you have a team's number.

And after Sunday's 57-55 win against their archrivals from Gainesville, that number is now three for the Seminoles.

FSU, which withstood a last-second 3-point attempt from Florida's Dan Werner, won its third straight in the series - and fourth in five games - before a crowd of 8,983 at the Civic Center.

"It feels really good," FSU redshirt freshman center Solomon Alabi said. "This is a big rivalry game. We needed to win. We needed to keep the tradition going."

Said FSU coach Leonard Hamilton: "Obviously this game could have gone either way."

But in this series, lately, the games seem to be going in the same direction.

Junior Ryan Reid and sophomore Jordan DeMercy were the catalysts down the stretch for the Seminoles, who trailed 49-43 with six minutes remaining. Reid scored eight of Florida State's final 12 points, including a terrific step-back jumper to put the Seminoles up three with 38 seconds left, and DeMercy scored all of his career-high 12 points in the second half.

But the reason the Seminoles are now 8-1 had much more to do with their defense than their offense.

Florida State's length gave the Gators (6-2) fits all night. Florida, which averaged almost 80 points per game coming in, shot just 39.2 percent from the field and was just 4-for-18 from 3-point range. The Seminoles (8-1) also caused 16 turnovers - including two critical ones during a stretch in which they turned a 49-43 Florida lead into a 49-all game with just less than five minutes remaining.

"I thought the difference in the game was their ability to rebound and our turnovers," said Florida coach Billy Donovan, whose team was outrebounded 36-32. "That played a big role the last five minutes of the game."

The Seminoles' defense was so stifling in fact that they held a one-point halftime lead despite shooting just 27.6 percent from the field.

"We came out and knew we had to rebound and play defense," Reid said. "That's what we talked about. We put our hands up and when they come in we just go all out."

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