Florida State stomps Miami, 80-65, continues rivalry dominance

Florida State’s best player was on the bench with four fouls. The home team was making a serious run. The crowd (for what it was) was as loud as it had been all night.

And that’s when Chandler Jackson stepped up with perhaps the biggest defensive play of the game.

Jackson blocked a Miami fast-break layup attempt that would have cut Florida State’s lead to four points with 10 minutes to go, and that then led to an alley-oop dunk by Jerry Deng on the other end.

From there, it was all FSU in the second half as the Seminoles ran away with an 80-65 victory on Wednesday night in Coral Gables.

Florida State is now an astonishing 14-1 in its last 15 games against Miami. And for the season, the Seminoles are now 11-4 overall and 2-2 in the ACC.

FSU led for most of the night and might have righted the ship anyway, without Jackson’s play. But it sparked an emphatic game-changing run that put the Hurricanes to sleep. Florida State outscored Miami 26-5 over the next seven minutes.

Jackson made two free throws, Justin Thomas drilled a 3-pointer, Jackson then hit a pull-up jumper, and then Malique Ewin took over — scoring three buckets, including a thunderous dunk and a circus-like over-the-shoulder and-1 shot, and he also found DaQuan Davis for a run-out layup after a defensive rebound.

When the dust finally settled after the run, Florida State was up 80-55 and had made 11 straight shots from the floor. Miami scored the final 10 points of the game against the Seminoles’ backups and walk-ons, but it didn’t come close to mattering.

Davis finished with 9 points and a career-high 10 assists. The freshman point guard scored the Seminoles’ first seven points of the second half after FSU took a 39-25 lead into the locker room. Ewin finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds, Taylor Bol Bowen had 16 points and was 6-of-6 from the floor and 4-of-4 from 3-point range. He also added six rebounds, three assists, a block and a steal.

The Seminoles had 26 assists on the night as a team, which is the most for FSU in an ACC road game in school history.

Florida State’s All-ACC candidate, Jamir Watkins, scored just 10 points in 18 minutes because of foul trouble. It didn’t matter. His teammates made sure of that.

Matthew Cleveland led Miami with 16 points but was only 3-of-9 from the free-throw line. The Florida State transfer has now lost to his former school three straight times since moving to Coral Gables.

Florida State plays again on Saturday at 2 p.m. at Clemson.

SIGN UP: Join Warchant’s FSU Community for $1 today

***Talk about this story with passionate FSU Basketball fans on the Seminole Hoops***