It wasn’t shocking that Anthony Polite hit 4 of 7 shots from 3-point range Monday night. He is statistically the best perimeter shooter on a Florida State team that led the Atlantic Coast Conference in that category.
It also wasn’t that surprising that Polite scored 22 points. Even though it was a new career high, the redshirt junior has scored in double-figures in 11 of the 20 games he’s played in this season.
What did make Polite’s performance in Indianapolis so extraordinary — and so impactful for the Seminoles — was where and when it came.
Just two days after FSU survived one of its worst offensive performances of the season in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Polite’s hot shooting sparked a Seminole outburst in the Round of 32. He and his teammates erupted for 47 points in the second half against No. 5 seed Colorado, pulling away for a 71-53 victory that sends them into a Sweet 16 showdown on Sunday with No. 1 seed Michigan.
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While the No. 4-seeded Seminoles still didn’t deliver one of their better offensive performances overall, it was a far cry from Saturday’s 64-54 win over UNC-Greensboro. The Seminoles missed all nine of their 3-point attempts in that game.
“We went 0-for-9 last game — I think it would be impossible to do that shooting the 3,” Polite said after his big night against Colorado. “We are all confident and very good shooters. Shot it and it went in, and I’m glad it did.”
As well as Florida State has shot the ball from long range this season — the Seminoles lead all ACC teams at 38.2 percent from 3 — they have struggled at times when playing away from the Tucker Center.
So after their woeful shooting performance in the first round, there was reason to question whether the ‘Noles would bounce back strong enough to hang with a Colorado team that hit 16 of 25 3-pointers in its NCAA Tournament opener.
Polite set the tone early.
The son of former FSU forward Michael Polite, who played from 1987-91, took the Seminoles’ first shot of the night and drained a 3-pointer. Then after Colorado answered with a 3-pointer of its own, Polite promptly hit another from long range.
By the end of the night, he had hit 8 of 12 shots from the field while adding five rebounds, four assists and four steals. Polite is now shooting 44.0 percent from 3-point range on the season (33-for-75), which leads FSU and would be the best in the ACC if he had enough attempts to qualify for the league standings.
Along with his offensive exploits, Polite played a pivotal role in helping Florida State neutralize the Buffaloes’ perimeter-focused attack. He was one of several Seminole defenders who took turns harassing CU point guard McKinley Wright IV, forcing the senior star into five turnovers and a 4-for-12 shooting performance.
“Anthony is one of the better on-the-ball defenders that we’ve ever coached at Florida State,” FSU coach Leonard Hamilton said. “He is sound fundamentally. Has a high basketball IQ. He’s a Seminole. He plays within himself. You barely ever see him forcing a shot. He rebounds, gets deflections and steals.
“He’s really grown into it from his freshman year. He had a rash of knee injuries as a freshman, and he had to be redshirted. So now you just see him coming to his own and making a major contribution. I’m just so proud of him.”
Polite’s Florida State journey has indeed been one of humble beginnings but steady growth.
As a redshirt freshman in 2018-19, he ranked 11th on the team in scoring at 2.7 points per game. One year later, Polite boosted that average to 5.8 points and he even earned eight appearances in the starting lineup.
This season, the fourth-year junior has taken his game to a completely different level.
Polite established his previous career high with 15 points against Gardner-Webb in mid-December, and he had two other games with 14 points (Florida and UCF).
He now has hit at least one 3-pointer in 19 of the 20 games he has played in this season — the lone exception was in the first round against UNC-Greensboro — and he has hit multiple 3-pointers nine times.
Polite’s numbers might be even more impressive had he not missed four games in late January due to a shoulder injury.
Fortunately for Florida State, that ailment — along with the tweaks and strains that have been plaguing several Seminoles in recent weeks — seemed like a distant memory late Monday.
“I’m so proud of Anthony because he had the shoulder injury there about middle ways in the season,” Hamilton said, adding that M.J. Walker, Malik Osborne, Scottie Barnes and Balsa Koprivica have all been battling injuries as well. “We’ve been limping around a little bit, and it’s thrown us off our shooting schemes and not being able to get shots up and trying to get treatment. I’m hoping that with a little time off here and there, it looked like we’re getting back to shooting the ball where we were earlier in the season.
“Our defense, we kind of got healed up from some of the ankle turns and little strains that we had. So I’m hopeful that we can continue to keep getting better, because we’re sure going to need it as we move through the rest of the March Madness.”
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