FSU basketball: 3 reasons Leonard Hamilton is ACC Coach of the Year

By Kelvin Hunt | Mar 9, 2020

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT - MARCH 21: Head coach head coach Leonard Hamilton of the Florida State Seminoles signals from the bench as his team play against the Vermont Catamounts during the first round game of the 2019 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at XL Center on March 21, 2019 in Hartford, Connecticut. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images) /

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(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) /

Talent

Leonard Hamilton has done a great job of getting top tier talent to Tallahassee over the past few years. The number of players drafted since 2015 is a testament to his work on the recruiting trail.

However, it’s still not in the same ballpark as the blue blood programs like Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, and others.

Hamilton has used a mixture of solid three and four-star recruits while developing those players in a rotation that goes 10 or 11 players deep each year.

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He’s done a great job of getting players to buy-in to his vision and culture of the program.

Here’s a look at where FSU basketball has finished in the composite rankings since 2017:

2017: 12th in the nation(4th in the ACC)
2018: 122nd in the nation (13th in the ACC)
2019: 19th in the nation (4th in the ACC)

It’s easy to guess which ACC teams finished in front of the Noles in those three seasons. Duke and Louisville finished ahead of the Noles in all three seasons. North Carolina finished ahead of them in two of those seasons, and Miami finished ahead of FSU in 2017.

The Blue Devils have had the No. 1 class in the ACC in all of those seasons, and it still wasn’t enough to overcome what the Noles brought to the court night in and night out this season.

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