FSU Basketball: Leonard Hamilton ranked as an underappreciated coach

FSU basketball has yearly become a team that can make some noise in the postseason and it’s all because of the leadership of their longtime head coach.

For the third straight season, the FSU basketball team made it back to the NCAA tournament and spent a second straight year playing in the second weekend of the event – just the latest item on the resume of the man who has been leading them for nearly two decades and changing the face of the program.

In the last 17 seasons, head coach Leonard Hamilton has taken a program that had just 12 wins the season before he took over – and nine wins the year before that – into a team that set the program record for wins in a season last year (29) and could easily start the season ranked in the top 20 nationally.

It’s a program that went from the bottom of the ACC each season to one of the teams fighting for a top spot in the tournament each season these days – a program that has been to seven of the last 11 episodes of March Madness. Needless to say, Hamilton has been the savior for the FSU basketball team.

Florida State Seminoles

But is he one of the most underappreciated coaches in all of college basketball? According to ESPN, yes.

Earlier this week, the website ranked the coaches who fit into the category on a different level – with Hamilton on the list because he has one so much for the Seminoles that it is thought of that he is taken for granted.

"Hamilton has been an icon in Tallahassee since he accepted the job in 2002 following a tough stint with the Washington Wizards. He has shown no signs he intends to slow down…He’s also one of the few coaches with a winning record against Virginia (3-2) over the past four seasons.Hamilton has seven top-five finishes in the ACC, a league that has claimed three of the past five national titles and competed in four of the past five national title games. Hamilton is an elite coach."

Speaking for us here at Chop Chat, we have never been part of the group that the Worldwide Leader has put Hamilton in – as long as he has been the leader for FSU basketball with the way he has turned around the program, he will never be taken for granted and will constantly be praised for the way things have changed.

While the upcoming season could be a bit tougher with players like Terance Mann and Mfiondu Kabengele among the group that is leaving, the team will not be taking a step back to a losing season – that’s not how this Seminoles team operates anymore.