A Closer Look at the FSU Men's Basketball Schedule, Michael Snaer Talks UF

Yesterday the Florida State Seminoles released their full schedule for the men's basketball season, you can check that out here. Today we're going to break it down a little bit more, look at a few key dates and try to figure out where the Seminoles will be sitting headed into ACC play.

Taking a Closer Look

For starters, as was mentioned when the ACC portion of the schedule was released, there are now 18 conference games, nine home, nine away. The additional games are to compensate for the arrival of Syracuse and Pittsburgh (who better bring their A-games in basketball because they look like dead weight on the gridiron right now).

The Noles start the year with two exhibitions, toss those two out right away. Florida State will roll big in both games and it will be a nice way to see what the team is going to try to do this year on offense, but other than that you won't gain much from either.

The season really kicks off the second week of November with the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament of 12 that Florida State will be playing in. The 'Noles host Buffalo and South Alabama before heading to the Nets new arena, the Barclay Center up in Brooklyn for the final two rounds. In New York the Seminoles will square off against BYU in the semis and either Notre Dame or St. Joseph's in the final round.

The Coaches vs. Cancer tournament is an annual event in partnership with the American Cancer Society, it's raised over 80 million dollars for charitable causes and as far as I can tell it's completely rigged.

That's a joke, sort of. The four host schools, FSU, BYU, ND and St. Joe's are all guaranteed to be in Brooklyn in the Championship round. The 'Noles should have no issue getting past Buffalo and South Alabama, but if they did I'm not really sure it would matter. 

At any rate, the Championship round is a great early season barometer for this Seminole team. All four schools are typically tournament-goers and the Seminoles would do well to beat at least one in Brooklyn.

This year Florida State gets a much better draw in the ACC/Big Ten challenge too. The past few years catching Ohio State and Michigan State (both top 10 schools) was just bad luck. This year Minnesota is much more manageable for the Seminoles. 

The annual matchup with Florida is on December 5th and the only other game of significance after that is in the Orange Bowl Classic at the Bank Atlantic Center when Florida State takes on Tulsa. The game will be followed by UF-Air Force in the one day event.

Big Matchups

FSU-BYU Novemeber 16, 2012

The Seminoles will face a BYU team lead by senior forward Brandon Davies. This is going to be the first true indication of just how different this FSU team is this year. Gone are the big bodies of Bernard James, Jon Kreft and Xavier Gibson and with them a lot of the reason behind the defensive supremacy the Seminoles have demonstrated the past few years. This will be a tough test inside for the Seminoles and a good early indicator of where they stand against solid competition. 

UF-FSU December 5, 2012

The storyline going into this game will be Michael Snaer and Kenny Boykin, two of the nation's top guards, squaring off for the final time. Boykin is 3-0 all-time in the matchup, and that's something, Snaer told me last week, he really needs to change.

"Me and Kenny are really good friends, really really good friends actually, I'm probably going to know Kenny the rest of my life," said Snaer. "He has bragging rights right now, let's put it like that, and he always likes to talk to me, everytime we get together I've got to hear his mouth, every single time."

"I'm excited about this game, it's my senior year, it's his senior year. We're both looking forward to this game. As far as a personal matchup it's nothing like that, we're good friends. Of course we're going to love going up against each other but it's more about the win.

"Pretty much what it boils down to is what we're going to talk about years from now is who won. And if he's won all four games I'm going to have to sit there and listen to that the rest of my life."

Where FSU should be on 1/5/13

January 5, 2013 is the start of ACC play and the end of the Seminoles non-conference schedule. Ideally you like to see the Seminoles go unbeaten before entering conference play but I think a better, more realistic benchmark would be 11-2. 

If the Seminoles can enter ACC play 11-2 they're in solid position to get back to the tournament before ever playing a conference game. 

It's going to be football on the Herald FSU blog the rest of the weekend, keep checking back for regular updates.

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