Inside the box score: Florida State 76, VCU 71

1. VCU made 10-19 (53%) 3s to stay in the game, with Melvin Johnson tying his career high with eight. One difficult thing for fans to grasp is that teams have little control over how accurate the opposition is from the 3-pt line (this statement is grossly simplifying the data, but is still accurate). Not only is there a tremendous amount of randomness in 3-pt shooting, but, unlike shots around the rim, the 3-pointer is almost always lightly or undefended. One thing teams can control is how many threes their opponent attempts. The more 3s a team allows, the higher the percentage of their opponent. Looking at that metric, Florida State is currently 214th in 3-pt attempts allowed. If FSU's defense was stifling opponents for 26-seconds and they were jacking contested 3s, that would be great. But that has not been happening. Teams are hunting 3s, and they're finding them. The good news is that FSU is athletic, long (9th in effective height), and young (273rd in experience), which is a good combination for a defense which will get better.

2. Boris Bojanovsky had six blocks, which was the 3rd time in his career he's had at least six. He's currently on pace to finish his career with ~197, which would put him in 2nd place all time at FSU, one ahead of Corey Louis, and considerably behind the awesome pace of Rodney Dobard.

3. A strength of this year's team was supposed to be depth. While the depth has certainly been higher than in recent seasons, Xavier Rathan-Mayes has averaged 34 minutes per game over his past three, and played a season high 38 vs VCU. No one can be expected to play 38 minutes against a team like VCU and remain at full speed. The problem is threefold: Robbie Berwick may have to redshirt the season, Benji Bell isn't yet ready for extended minutes, and Devon Bookert is playing with an injured wrist. At least one of those things needs to change prior to conference play.

4. VCU forces the 2nd most steals in the nation and thrives off of those live ball turnovers. But FSU flipped the script yesterday and outscored the Rams 17-14 off turnovers, and 27-17 on the fast break. In the season preview I wrote that a good goal for the FSU offense would be to attempt 30% of their shots in transition (up from last year's 23%). So far, the Noles have exceeded that, taking 33.6% of their shots in transition. Leonard Hamilton said over the weekend that he is happy that the Seminoles are playing so fast, but wants them to play even faster.

5. FSU won 76-71 in a 76 possession game. Scoring 0.93 points per possession was VCU's 2nd worst offensive output of the year, despite Melvin Johnson having a career night.