Florida State University Athletics
Florida State Defeats Penn 105-70 In Season Opener
11/10/2021 11:15:45 PM | Men's Basketball
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (seminoles.com) – Redshirt senior Malik Osborne had a team high 18 points and 13 rebounds in Florida State’s 105-70 season-opening victory against the University of Pennsylvania at the Donald L. Tucker Center. The performance marked Osborne’s fourth career double-double and his Florida State career high in scoring. The Seminoles’ victory over Penn marks the first time they have defeated a team from the Ivy League in program history.
Osborne led three Seminoles in double-figure scoring in the victory. Senior RayQuan Evans and sophomore Caleb Mills contributed 14 points while redshirt senior Anthony Polite scored 17. Evans had five assists and three steals against the Quakers as well.
Polite scored three triples against Penn and is now one of the top 25 3-point field goal shooters by percentage with a .366 throughout his career. He has 82 career 3-point field goals made and needs 18 more to become the 24th player in school history with 100 or more career 3-point field goals made.
“I thought our players showed a tremendous amount of maturity tonight, in terms of giving our inexperienced guys a lot of leadership on the floor,” said Seminole Head Coach Leonard Hamilton. “I thought we had good focus during the week.”
Sophomore Cam’ron Fletcher was one point shy of double figure scoring with nine points but contributed a career-high five steals.
The Seminoles were up by a 51-39 margin going into the locker room at halftime, with a 17-point performance by Osborne and four steals from Fletcher all in the first half.
With 16 Seminoles getting playing time, Florida State extended their lead to 41 points late in the second half. The Seminoles held the Quakers to .397 shooting from the field and held a 49-29 rebounding margin. Florida State had 15 steals while Penn only had four.
“Were still are trying to find ourselves,” said Hamilton. “We are still trying to develop some consistency in our practices, and we know that we can be better than how we played tonight. I thought our effort, our energy, even though we played through some mistakes, was tremendous. We didn’t shoot well from the three; we are a better three point shooting team than we showed, but they pressed the entire game and until the last two or three minutes we only had eight turnovers and that just shows that our guys are learning and growing and absorbing what we are trying to teach them.”
Florida State’s triple digit performance marks the 11th time in program history that the ‘Seminoles have scored over 100 points in a season opener. The most recent was a 109-62 victory over Nicholls State on November 15, 2015.
Penn’s Jordan Dingle led the Quakers with a game-high 23 points while junior Jonah Charles and sophomore Clark Slajchert had 12 points apiece.
“We knew that Florida State would be long and athletic,” said Penn Coach Steve Donahue. “But I think what caught our guys off guard a little bit was how physical and relentless they were — especially on the defensive end. With so many of our guys playing in a regular-season game for the first time, there were more ‘welcome to college basketball’ moments than I would have liked to see. There was a tenacity to that FSU team that doesn’t translate on film.”
Osborne spoke of the tremendous atmosphere in the Tucker Center.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” said Osborne. “We’ve got a lot of guys who are energy guys, so them playing in these types of environments where the Tucker is packed out and everybody is giving us energy. Those things are what make us play even harder, what drives us even more because we know we are playing for each other, but we also have the extra support of our fan base behind us.”
The No. 19/20 Seminoles are traveling to Gainesville to play Florida, seeking to extend their seven game winning streak against the Gators on Sunday at 1pm. The game will be aired on ESPN.