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From cracking beers to 'an all-out war,' how Luke Loucks flipped the script for FSU basketball

XN5fvSCv_400x400by: Tom Lang02/24/26

After NC State embarrassed his program on January 10 with a 113-69 shellacking, FSU head coach Luke Loucks and staff remained in the basketball facility until the early hours of January 11 — almost 4 a.m. by Loucks’ count — to set the stage for what would come next.

“We cracked open some beers,” Loucks explained to Warchant’s Jeff Cameron in a one-on-one interview. “We watched every single possession of that game. And then we hashed some stuff out as a staff in terms of, ‘listen, this is not working. We are going to find a solution — and it doesn’t have to be tonight — but we’re at least going to lay down some blueprint right now because I’m not going to continue to get my teeth kicked in in front of my home crowd.'”

The Seminoles would lose twice more after that meeting, dropping to 0-5 in ACC play. But since then, changes have taken hold and FSU has won seven of nine conference games.

Loucks pointed to a double-down approach to demanding drills in practice as a critical choice.

“By that next practice [after the late-night meeting], we turned our practices into basically an all-out war,” he said. “Because we were playing soft, we couldn’t guard anyone. You can’t let a team put 113 on you at home. And from that moment, man, we worked on one-on-one defense every day. We work on, we call ‘war rebounding,’ where it’s one-on-one rebounding every day, where it’s you or the other guy and you’ve got to fight and there’s nowhere to hide.”

In his full interview with “The Jeff Cameron Show,” Loucks discusses:

  • Proposing changes to the seating layout at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center
  • Robert McCray V’s growth and development
  • AJ Swinton’s bounce-back season and more

To watch the whole interview, click play on the video link above.

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