Matthew Cleveland scored 21 points and collected 12 rebounds for his fifth consecutive double-double as Florida State dominated Georgia Tech the last 24 minutes for a 75-64 victory Saturday at Tallahassee, Fla.
The win was coach Leonard Hamilton’s 400th win (against 258 losses) in Atlantic Coast Conference play to join Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (1,129), North Carolina’s Dean Smith (879), North Carolina’s Roy Williams (485), and Maryland’s Gary Williams (461) at that level. It was Hamilton’s 600th win against 469 defeats overall.
Cleveland’s eighth career double-double helped fuel the Seminoles (5-11, 3-2 ACC), who closed out the first half with a 9-2 run to overcome a six-point deficit and opened up a 67-47 gap in the first 11 minutes of the second half.
Darin Green Jr. scored 18 points and Caleb Mills had 13 points and seven assists.
Lance Terry scored 17 points and Miles Kelley scored all of his 16 points in the first eight minutes of the game for the Yellow Jackets (8-7, 1-4 ACC). Deebo Coleman also was in double figures for Tech with 11 points.
Fortunes for the two teams changed dramatically after the opening moments. The Seminoles started the game a so-so 4-of-10 from the field and finished 30-of-61 (49.2 percent).
The Yellow Jackets started 8-of-9 but finished only 23-of-57 (40.4 percent) for the game with stretches of 1-of-12 and 2-of-11 before a 4-of-5 spurt got the gap down to 14 points at 74-61 approaching the two-minute mark.
Tech’s 10-0 scoring run accounted for the final margin.
The Jackets built a quick 16-7 lead after coming out and hitting their first six shots, half of them from 3-point range.
But the Seminoles kept chipping away and overcame a six-sixpoint deficit in the last four minutes of the first half, taking a 36-34 lead on Naheem McLeod’s layup and free throw with 2:01 remaining in the period.
Cleveland’s 3-pointer capped a 9-0 run and gave the Seminoles their biggest lead of the half 39-34, but Coleman’s jumper got Tech to within 39-36 at the break.
–Field Level Media