Melina Vastola- US Presswire

In the most shocking upset of the opening night of college basketball 25th ranked Florida State lost at home to South Alabama 76-71.  This is incredibly embarrassing for the Seminoles, who had beaten South Alabama last season by 41 points.

There will be a lot of finger pointing in Tallahassee, and one of the biggest targets will be senior leader Michael Snaer.  Snaer scored just 10 points in the game and turned the ball over five times, a key reason for the poor, inefficient offensive showing by Florida State.  The All-American candidate struggled against South Alabama, a middling Sun Belt team.  It goes without saying that that type of performance is not All-American worthy.  He was second team All-ACC last season, but this was not the performance of one of the best players in the conference.

Snaer, who is ninth in school history in three point shooting, shot 0-6 from deep.  He seemed hesitant and unfocused all game on offense. He missed two threes in the final minute, one of which would have tied the game at 72-72, with twenty seconds left.

However, Snaer was not alone in his poor play tonight.  It was truly a team effort, in ineffectiveness. Nobody on Florida State scored over 11 points, and the team shot an embarrassing 5-21 from deep.  Defensively, things were not much better.  The more athletic Seminoles gave up too much penetration, allowing for South Alabama to get 32 free throw attempts and very good, open three point looks, where they made 9 of 15.

This is college basketball, not football, so one non-conference loss does not doom the season for Florida State.  However, it is extremely disappointing and raises many questions for the 25th ranked team.  They have nine consecutive home games coming up and Snaer and his team must figure out what went wrong tonight.  It is important to remember that all November results should be taken with a grain of salt, as teams change so much by the middle of  the year.  By the end of the year Florida State fans will likely look back at this game as a bad night, but nothing more.  This is likely an isolated mishap, an aberration, not a real showing of what this team an be. Snaer is too good, and so is the rest of this team, to not improve drastically. For tonight though, this game was just embarrassing.