Florida State Basketball: Seminoles keys to beat Vermont in Round of 64

Fourth seeded Florida State Basketball takes on thirteen seed Vermont in the first round of the NCAA tournament at 2:00 EST on Thursday in Hartford, Connecticut. The game will be televised on TBS.

Florida State Basketball enters the tournament with a 27-7 record, and ended the season about as impressively as a fan could hope. While they lost to Duke in the final of the ACC tournament, they put up a strong fight in the title game. They took down Virginia Tech multiple times in the final two weeks of the season as well as a defeating Virginia in the conference tournament semifinals.

Only five schools in the past two seasons have managed to come away with a win against Virginia. The team that made it to the Elite Eight last year and fell four points short of a Final Four looks poised to make another deep run this season.

Any run that the Seminoles wants to make however will first have to begin by taking care of business in the first round against the American East Champion Vermont Catamounts, who boast an impressive 27-6 record heading into the tournament.

The Catamounts went 14-2 in their conference, good enough for first in the regular season, with both losses coming at the hands of last year’s tournament Cinderella UMBC. In notable non-conference play they lost to Kansas by 16 and to Louisville by only eight. Last season as a 13 seed the Catamounts kept four seed Purdue within one point at halftime before ultimately falling by ten. The Seminoles are facing a team who will not be pushovers and will need to focus on three keys in order to ensure they avoid an upset in the first round.