FSU basketball picked to finish dead last in the ACC out of 18 teams

The Luke Loucks era of FSU basketball is officially underway, and the bar is extremely low for the FSU alum and long-time NBA assistant head coach in his first season in Tallahassee.

Loucks replaces FSU legend and his former head coach Leonard Hamilton, after Hamilton finished (17-15, 8-12 ACC) in his final season.

That was good enough for 9th in the ACC, which is a far cry from the No. 18 spot and dead last. However, that’s where one social media account projected the Noles to finish in Luke Loucks' inaugural season.

That projection seems off and rooted in putting something on social media to get a reaction. It worked since we’re writing about it. FSU has played two exhibition games recently. One against a team ranked inside the top-25 last season in Alabama. The other was Tallahassee neighbor, FAMU.

FSU showed many positives in both games, considering they have so many new faces. They were competitive with Alabama for the entire game, losing 109-105. They defeated FAMU 88-54, though they played sloppily at times and missed open shots.

FSU wants to play at a fast pace, so they’ll likely have more turnovers than usual. They will shoot lots of three-point attempts, so there’s a definite live and die by the three-ball aspect. However, they play hard and with a lot of energy. They’ll win games on that aspect alone, and they’ll likely have some games where they shoot lights out and surprise some folks.

FSU plays a nice opening slate of games that could help the team find confidence early. The ACC did them no favors by entering conference play with back-to-back games against North Carolina and Duke. However, we should have a good sense of where this team is by the time that get to that part of the schedule.