TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- The No. 20-ranked Florida State men's basketball team entered the holiday break at 12-1 and off to their best start in 10 years.
But when you're a member of the toughest conference in the nation, non-conference success doesn't mean much.
And Seminoles head coach Leonard Hamilton is the first to admit that heading into his team's ACC opener Wednesday at home against Wake Forest (9-3).
"This is a great conference that's (somehow) gotten better," said Hamilton, whose program is about to play five of its next seven games against Top 25 programs -- all hailing from the ACC. "I don't think we've seen anything like what's getting ready to happen."
He isn't joking.
After Wednesday's game at home against a dangerous Demon Deacons team, which has won four of its last five and is coming off a 110-76 rout of LSU on Dec. 22, the schedule gets even scarier, including:
Saturday: at No. 12 Virginia (10-1)
Jan. 7: vs. Virginia Tech (10-1)
Jan. 10: vs. No. 5 Duke (12-1)
Jan. 14: at No. 9 North Carolina (11-2)
Jan. 18: vs. No. 24 Notre Dame (10-2)
Jan. 21: vs. No. 6 Louisville (11-1)
Yes, five of those seven games over the next three weeks are at home at the Donald L. Tucker Center, where Florida State is 9-0 this season. But, no, that doesn't matter very much.
"We're pleased that we are 12-1 in the pre-conference," Hamilton said. "Now, it's on. Let's get the party started."
The Seminoles, who haven't been ranked this high since 2012, when they won the ACC Championship and finished 10th in the AP Top 25 Poll, had a nice long break to prepare for Wake Forest. Florida State last played Dec. 19 against Samford and came away with a hard-fought 76-68 victory, led by a career-high 19 points from guard Terance Mann, who has emerged as the Seminoles' central leader in just his sophomore season.
"I just stick to my game. I'm just a natural leader," said Mann, who averages 8.8 points and 4.8 rebounds a game. "If I'm out there playing aggressive and showing no negative emotions, then (my teammates) will hop on board and show the same thing."
After that win over Samford, Mann said the nine-day holiday hiatus before opening ACC play against the Demon Deacons would be nice, but with the Seminoles "rolling right now," he wouldn't have minded facing Wake Forest the very next day.
"We wish we could keep playing," Mann said with a smile.
Joining Mann in the leadership conversation early in the season is the Seminoles' unquestioned scoring leader, Dwayne Bacon, who averages 16.9 points and has scored in double figures 22 straight games dating to last season. Bacon had a chance to leave last season and leap to the NBA, but he opted to return and he now finds himself one of the focal points of a talented squad whose only loss thus far came against Temple in the NIT Tip-Off.
Florida State actually led that game against the Owls by 18 points before blowing the lead late. It appears the Seminoles have learned from that loss, having now won eight games in a row heading into the showdown against Wake.
"Defensively, I felt like once we've got into (situations like we did against Temple), we've turned it up a notched," Hamilton said of what his team learned from its lone blemish on the record. "The focus has been better."
The series between Wake Forest and Florida State is tied 24-24, with the Seminoles winning the last meeting 91-71 on Feb. 6, 2016, in North Carolina, as well as the last meeting in Tallahassee in 2015. That one went to double overtime before the Seminoles prevailed 59-57.
Florida State has actually won the last four meetings at the Tucker Center, with the Demon Deacons' last victory in Tallahassee coming in 2007-08.
But Wake Forest looked scary good in its last game, scoring 67 points in the second half alone against LSU -- one shy of the school record for points in a half. Wake Forest also made 16 3-pointers in the victory against the Tigers -- tied for the third-most in school history -- and the Demon Deacons rode the shoulders of a career-high 28 points by junior forward Dinos Mitoglou
"I was very happy, because, as a staff, we saw some growth in our team," Wake Forest coach Danny Manning said of the team's highest-scoring game all season. "We've been in situations like this earlier in the year when we would get decent leads on teams and we weren't able to sustain those leads for whatever reason -- not defending, not rebounding, trying to make home-run, hero plays -- and I thought tonight we made a few of those mistakes, but we didn't make as many as we have in the past.
"For us, defensively, we can do some better things, but we shot the ball so well it covered up a lot of our mistakes."
Wake Forest is led offensively by 6-foot-10 sophomore John Collins, who averages 17.3 points and 10.4 rebounds. It will be an interesting matchup to watch when Florida State counters with its own 6-10 forward, freshman Jonathan Isaac, who is averaging 12.9 points and seven rebounds.
