CMU men's basketball falls behind early in loss at Florida State
Kicking off the Sunshine Slam tournament, Central Michigan basketball looked to upset ACC opponent Florida State. That all changed in a hurry as the Seminoles opened the game on a 13-1 scoring run and never looked back.
The Chippewas fell to FSU 94-67, leading to their third consecutive loss to start the season.
“Give Florida State credit,” head coach Tony Barbee said. “They force you into a lot of mistakes, a lot of our mistakes were unforced.”
Although the score, Barbee thought his team competed the best they have all season as the Chippewas never gave up even after finding themselves down 20 at half.
“If we would have competed like this the first two games our record would be completely different,” Barbee said. “If we play connected like we did tonight and compete no matter the score for 40 minutes you’ll have a chance in any game.”
Offensively this was the best game of the season for the Chippewas. They scored a season high 67 points on 52 percent shooting (23-44), even though the team still struggled from three, shooting only 21 percent (4-19).
“We did exactly what we had to do to score against a team like that (Florida State),” Barbee said. “We were able to get the matchup we liked and then expose them one on one.”
Junior guard Anthony Pritchard continued his strong start to the season being the high scorer for the third-straight game. Pritchard had 16 points on 54 percent shooting (6-11), nine rebounds and five assists all of which were team highs.
“That’s what he’s (Pritchard) gotta be for us,” Barbee said. “That’s what I expect from him every game moving forward. He has the ability to cause that kind of havoc. He makes us a different team when he’s playing at that level.”
Graduate student guard Brian Taylor also added some solid scoring, adding 15 points on 62 percent (5-8) shooting with his only three misses coming from the three-point line.
Two categories changed the outcome of the game with one of those being turnovers. The Chippewas had 21 turnovers compared to Florida State's 14. FSU scored 34 points off turnovers compared to CMU’s 15.
The other category was the free throw line. CMU had more than double the chances at the free throw line than FSU yet, only converted five more shots. The Chippewas shot 54 percent (17-31) from the line leaving 14 points that would have cut the final score in half.
“You got to be able to make free throws when you step to that line,” Barbee said. “We're a good shooting team and we've left ... many points on the floor (where) who knows what the outcome would be.
Central Michigan will travel to Tampa, Florida as it will take on South Florida in its next game of the Sunshine Slam tournament on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
