On Saturday, Stanford men’s basketball defeated Florida State at home by a final score of 78-71. Stanford guard Oziyah Sellers led the way for the Cardinal with a career-high 27 points on 10-16 shooting from the field, 4-6 shooting from 3-point range, and 3-4 shooting from the foul line while guards Jaylen Blakes and Benny Gealer each had 13 points. Florida State forward Jamir Watkins was the top performer for the Seminoles with 20 points, eight rebounds, and two steals. Stanford improves to 14-6 overall and 6-3 in the ACC while Florida State falls to 13-7 overall and 4-5 in the ACC.
VIDEO: Stanford MBB Postgame Press Conference: Florida State
BOX SCORE: Florida State at Stanford-Saturday, January 25th
“Yeah, that was I think a really good win for our program,” Stanford head coach Kyle Smith said after the game. “Obviously, great respect I have for just Florida State. They’re consistently one of the biggest, longest, most athletic, best defensive teams in the country. Really hard to prepare for and I thought our guys really stepped up to the challenge. They did a great job of really making hard for Maxime to get catches and got physical and we had to have some other guys step up and make plays.
“Benny and Oziyah really did that for us. I think that’s a sign of the growth of our team. I mean, we’re consistently getting good efforts. We’ve been really blessed to get Jalen, Maxime, and Oziyah really consistent every night. But then I thought Chiz, I thought Aiden, I thought Donavin, and Benny was just spectacular, just helping handle all that pressure. So, great win for our team and hopefully we can settle in and get some good practices and get ready for Syracuse on Wednesday.”
Stanford would lead 9-8 with 15:37 to go in the first half. Ryan Agarwal was leading the Cardinal with five points on a backdoor cut bucket inside and a 3-pointer, getting off to a good start. Stanford would continue to lead, going up 14-10 with 11:27 to go in the half. Oziyah Sellers was starting to get going for the Cardinal with five points of his own after a nice transition dunk. Stanford was shooting 6-13 from the field while Florida State was shooting 5-16.
"Yeah, I mean, I got a steal, seen the fast break," Sellers recalled of his dunk. "I was gonna go lay it up, but I'm like, why not try it? It's early. Might as well try it and it went well for me. So that was good."
With 9:44 to go in the half, Stanford was up 16-10 as they were currently on a 7-0 run. Sellers was up to seven points on 3-4 shooting from the field, continuing to find a nice groove. Stanford would lead 18-11 with 7:59 to go in the half. Stanford was shooting 8-20 from the field while Florida State was shooting 5-18. Florida State’s offense was in a real funk. Florida State would wake up a bit to go on a 6-0 run, making it an 18-16 lead for Stanford with 6:06 to go in the half. Jamir Watkins was up to six points for the Seminoles, doing his part to keep his team in the game.
Stanford would then respond, leading 24-18 with 3:48 to go in the half. Sellers continued to ball out with 10 points while Benny Gealer was on the board with a 3-pointer.
Stanford would lead 33-25 at halftime as Chisom Okpara hit a huge 3-pointer with 15 seconds to go in the half, giving the Cardinal a bit more of a cushion. Sellers was leading the Cardinal with 13 points on 5-8 shooting from the field. The Cardinal were in a comfortable spot and playing in front of an energetic crowd.
“Yeah, I mean, I feel like that’s great,” Sellers said of the crowd. “I’m glad the fans are starting to recognize us, starting to come out. I hope fans continue to come and we continue to have great crowds. For sure.”
“Yeah, it really helps seeing the students, all our friends in the crowd cheering us on,” Gealer added. “The more the better. We love it. They need to keep coming, we need to keep winning. We’ll do that.”
Stanford got off to a solid start in the second half, leading 46-36 with 15:39 to go. Sellers was going off with 19 points on 7-10 shooting from the field and 2-2 shooting from the foul line. He was really starting to heat up as Florida State didn’t have an answer for him.
With 12:27 to go, Stanford remained in front 52-44. Maxime Raynaud nearly brought the house down for the Cardinal on a dunk, but instead Taylor Bol Bowen answered on the other end for the Seminoles with a 3-pointer. Sellers was up to 22 points for the Cardinal while Watkins had 15 points and six rebounds for the Seminoles.
Stanford would lead 55-46 with 10:28 to go as Gealer was up to nine points on 3-5 shooting from 3-point range. With Raynaud having just four points at this point of the game, it was huge for the Cardinal to find other sources of offense and Gealer was giving them just that.
“I just saw one fall,” Gealer said of his performance. “I mean, I had the air ball in the beginning. So, just knowing the work I put in, trusting the work I put in for years and before every practice is just shooting it if I’m open.”
“Benny’s great,” Smith said of Gealer. “We need him going in this thing just because their pressure and Benny’s been playing well and probably the fans wouldn’t notice the guy. He hadn’t been shooting the ball well, but I don’t want to talk about his assist to turnover in league. It’s really good and he’s been really guarding on the ball, giving us a help and relieve Jaylen. Jaylen’s got a lot on his plate, bringing the ball up the court, guarding all the time, and Benny’s emergence that way and being able to do that, it’s really helped us and then he was really just big time offensively, doing what he’s capable of doing, I just think he’s only going to get better for us.”
Stanford continued to be up by nine points as it was a 61-52 game with 7:45 to go. Sellers (23 points) and Gealer (13 points) were really carrying the load for the Cardinal. They were playing fantastic.
Stanford would then push their lead out to double digits as they were up 66-54 with 5:49 to go. Jaylen Blakes was in double figures for the Cardinal with 11 points after a 3-pointer.
With 3:53 to go, Stanford would lead 70-60 as Sellers was up to 25 points. He continued to stay in the zone. As for Raynaud, he was up to six points and 11 rebounds after Aidan Cammann found him for a nice bucket inside. Raynaud wasn’t having a great scoring night, but he was still very active on the glass and drawing attention from Florida State defenders, allowing the game to open up for others on his team.
“Maxime has been great for us all year,” Gealer said of Raynaud. “He’s such a good leader. Always gives us, I mean today he had 14 rebounds, so we always trust him. He was making plays even though he didn’t score as much.”
In the end, Stanford would win by a final score of 78-71. The final few minutes were choppy with lots of fouling and reviews by the officials, but none of it affected the bottom line. Stanford walked out with a comfortable win in the end.
“A little sloppy to finish it out,” Smith said. “They wore us out. We were a little fatigued. They were a little fatigued and I’m sure, but they kinda wore us out. That’s something for us to get better at.”
“Yeah, I feel like that’s kinda what we did, we let it slip away from us a little bit,” Sellers conceded. “So, we gotta be better on that end, but it was good to get it done in the end for sure.”
For Stanford, this is a good win. Florida State is a solid team and so to not drop this one speaks to the Cardinal’s ability to stay locked in. Especially with Raynaud not having his best offensive performance, finishing with eight points and 14 rebounds. Sellers really took over and then Gealer and Blakes were there to provide enough assistance.
“I feel like I just kind of got in a rhythm early,” Sellers said. “Usually when that happens, I feel like I have a pretty good game. So, just got in a rhythm early and then everything else just fell into place.”
“You know, I think the way they guard, they do give up a number of threes attempts,” Smith said of Sellers’ performance. “And I just said, we have to we beat pressure, we’re gonna have to attack and I think he just had just that mindset couple times and he hit a big one where Benny penetrated, he hit a tough one end of the shot clock first half and that kind of just got him confident and then transition and he’s a pretty gifted scorer and just kind of finds ways to score and really quiet guy and goes about his business.”
As for Florida State, to go 0-2 on the Bay Area road trip is tough. They’re a good enough team to have gotten a split, but in the end they came up short. To give them credit, they did a nice job of containing Raynaud, which if I were them would have been my first key to the game. It’s just that Stanford found other ways to score and at some point, you just have to tip your cap to the Cardinal.
Even though they didn’t get the win, I think it’s safe to say Florida State won the contest between which team had the cooler looking uniforms. They looked like they were competing in Legends of the Hidden Temple.
“I liked them,” Sellers said of the Seminoles’ teal uniforms. “I’m not gonna lie. I seen them in warmups. I’m like yeah, I like those. Plus it’s not really their school color, so to see them throw in a little odd color in there, I liked them.”
“Yeah, it’s funny, when we’re watching film before, Coach put one clip of them wearing those blue uniforms and he was just like this clip is just to see their uniform,” Gealer added. “It wasn’t even basketball related. It was good. It was just an all-around good night.”
Up next for Stanford is a home game against Syracuse on Wednesday, January 29th. Tipoff is set for 8:00 PM PT on ESPN2 or ESPNU.
“You know, I’m hoping they’re, Coach Autry is similar to Coach Hopkins when I was at Washington [State], and then I’ll just go off that,” Smith said looking ahead to Syracuse. “I’ll watch them, but I really I assume, they both played for Coach Boeheim, and I said their signature, I haven’t seen them play one possession I remember, so I’ll watch some film tomorrow, but in my mind I’ve been plugging in all right, Merrimack we played, they played a lot of zone and then you know, we’ll get prepped for like Washington when Coach Hopkins was there. So I think there’s gonna, should be some carry over, but I don’t know, I’ll have to dig into it tomorrow, try to enjoy this one tonight.”
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