Let me be the first to say, I really like Leonard Hamilton. Wherever Florida State plays basketball should have a name somewhere on the building. If there is a Mount Rushmore of Florida State basketball, Leonard Hamilton should be there.
He’s won 441 games at Florida State, and 202 ACC games. He coached at a time in the ACC from 2002 to the present when Duke’s Mike Mike Krzyzewski and UNC’s Roy Williams were in their prime. Jim Larranga was resurrecting Miami basketball, and Jim Boeheim was still taking Syracuse on deep tournament runs.
He’s a 3 time ACC COY and won an ACC tournament title in 2012. He might have had a team in the 2019-2020 Covid that could have won a national championship. As recently as the 2020-2021 season he had team reach the Sweet 16.
Leonard Hamilton has been very good. There is no question about that, but it is a what have you done for me lately world.
After today’s 85-76 loss to the ACC’s 14th-place team Georgia Tech, Hamilton fell to 41-51 (26-32) in just about 3 years. There will be no NCAA tournament for the third straight year for Hamilton barring an ACC tournament title as the Noles fell to 15-14 (9-9).
Saturday we saw a typical Hamilton team physically, long, and athletic, but didn’t have the defense prowess of past FSU teams. The Noles are 4-8 in their last 12 games and sit near the bottom of the ACC in most defensive and rebounding categories. Saturday an undersized Georgia Tech team outrebounded Florida State by a whopping 22 boards 55 – 33.
There is no star-studded class coming in 2024 either for Hamilton. Hamilton has done so much good at FSU, but the program feels stale. It may not be time to move on from Hamilton, but it seems like something that has to be on the radar of athletic leaders at Florida State in the next 12 months if things don’t improve.
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