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Posted: Wednesday October 16, 2002 2:03 PM Updated: Monday October 28, 2002 11:35 AM Florida State Seminoles
The following preview is provided by Blue Ribbon. For the most thorough preview available of the upcoming season, order the 2002-03 Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, on sale now at 1-800-775-2518. Team Preview | Blue Ribbon Analysis TEAM PREVIEW
There's a wonderful symmetry to the ACC. Duke owns the league's worst football program, but the Blue Devils have become the ACC's basketball headliner. Florida State, which boasts the ACC's premier football team, has become one of the conference's weakest programs in basketball. Interest has been waning in Tallahassee for years. Attendance at the Leon County Civic Center is the worst in the league. Last February, a baseball game on campus not only outdrew the FSU-North Carolina State basketball game, but also drew bigger headlines in the local paper. Leonard Hamilton's job is to change all that and smash the ACC's lovely symmetry. "It's a matter of rebuilding passion for the program," the new FSU coach said. "If you go back and look at it, when Florida State was going to Final Fours and having a great deal of success when Pat Kennedy was here, the passion was here. Basketball was further along than football in the '70s. Now our football team is successful ... our baseball team is successful. I can't see why we can't do the same thing." That was the idea when Florida State joined the ACC in time for the 1991-92 season. Kennedy brought a fairly successful basketball program into the league and promptly recorded two straight second-place finishes -- just behind the eventual NCAA champion on each occasion. But Kennedy couldn't sustain that success. His third ACC team dropped to the second division, and the 'Noles have stayed there ever since. Kennedy finally gave up and left for DePaul. Steve Robinson, a success at Tulsa, took over but saw his win total slip from 18 to 13 to 12 to 9 in successive years. He finally stopped the slide last season, but 12 wins with a senior-laden team wasn't enough to save his job.
Enter Mr. Hamilton, who had worked miracles as a program builder at Oklahoma State and Miami. He was available after a brief, unhappy experiment as the head coach of the NBA's Washington Wizards. Unfortunately, Robinson didn't leave Hamilton much to work with. Florida State lost three starters to graduation, a fourth starter -- massive center Nigel Dixon transferred -- and promising young guard J.D. Bracy left for academic reasons. So what was left? Well, Hamilton did inherit one proven ACC player in 6-foot-7 junior Michael Joiner (7.8 ppg, 4.7 rpg), who has 53 starts in two seasons. He made the ACC All-Rookie team as a freshman and continued his solid play as a sophomore. Joiner, who was passed over by the schools on Tobacco Road despite a stellar high school career at Fayetteville (N.C.) 71st High School, had 12 points and seven rebounds in FSU's monumental upset of No. 1 Duke last January. He had 15 points and five rebounds in FSU's ACC Tournament victory over Clemson. But Joiner's numbers are somewhat misleading. He's not exceptional in any one area, but he does everything well -- defense, rebounding, ball handling and, on occasion, scoring. He shot .403 on 77 3-point tries, making him the most accurate long-range shooter on last year's team. Florida State's other North Carolina high school product has even more potential. Sophomore Anthony Richardson (7.2 ppg, 3.6 rpg) ranked among the Seminole leaders in blocked shots, steals, assists and 3-pointers made -- despite playing just 17.6 minutes a game as a freshman. The 6-foot-8, 190-pounder was a McDonald's All-American at Leesville Road High School in Raleigh, N.C. Richardson celebrated his homecoming last season with a 19-point, 6-rebound effort at N.C. State. Both Joiner and Richardson should fit nicely into the system that Hamilton is planning to install at Florida State. He favors a flexible floor game without traditional positions. That suits Joiner, who's kind of a combination of a power forward and a wing forward, and Richardson, whose game doesn't really fit any traditional position. "In our system, we only have one position -- point guard," Hamilton said. "A point guard and four players." The big problem for Hamilton is that graduation claimed Delvon Arrington, FSU's four-year starter at the point. He averaged almost 34 minutes a game last year, and his departure left a void that Hamilton wasn't eager to fill with 5-foot-11 senior walk-on Marcell Haywood (0.1 ppg, 0.4 rpg), the only returning player with any experience at that position (even if it was just 5.4 minutes a game). "Any time you come in and take over a program, you have to assess the talent," Hamilton said. "It was obvious that by losing Delvon and only having a high school kid coming in, that we needed some experience." The high school player is 5-foot-10 Todd Galloway (16.5 ppg, 7.5 apg at Notre Dame Academy in Virginia). Signed by Robinson last fall, the little playmaker is a promising prospect. But is he an impact player? "I've coached 20 Division I kids over the last few seasons, but I've never had one with his level of fearlessness," Notre Dame head coach Larry Cullinane said. "His toughness and understanding of the game are his strongest assets. He has tremendous, tremendous court IQ." But Galloway won't have to run the show as a freshman. One of the first things Hamilton did after taking the FSU job was to go out and land a junior college point guard. He signed 6-foot-4 Nate Johnson (10.2 ppg, 7.3 apg at Moberly Area Community College in Missouri). "He's an experienced guard," Hamilton said. "He gained a lot of experience leading his team to fifth in the junior college tournament." Johnson could end up starting in the backcourt with another juco recruit. Late in the summer, Hamilton landed 6-foot-4 Tim Pickett, who averaged 21.0 points and 6.1 rebounds at Indian River (Fla.) Community College. The Daytona Beach, Fla., native originally signed with South Carolina after averaging 16.0 points as a freshman at Indian River. However, the SEC denied his transfer because of a rule requiring that a junior college player spend at least three consecutive semesters at the school from which he graduates. South Carolina's loss is FSU's gain. "Tim is a great shooter and a strong ball handler," Indian River coach Mike Leatherwood said. "He always plays with great intensity. He's fast and he attacks the basket." "Tim brings experience and maturity to our basketball team," Hamilton said. "Those two aspects of his game, along with his statistics, speak for themselves. He is very athletic and has the versatility to play more than one position." Pickett will have to compete with another newcomer on the wing. Benson Callier (18.0 ppg, 10.0 rpg at a prep school in Pennsylvania) didn't have much prep hype, but Hamilton likes the athleticism of the 6-foot-6, 200-pounder. "You have to have some good athletes," he said. "He's the kind of player who can give you some added depth." More wing depth will come from 6-foot-6 Andrew Wilson, who missed last season after suffering a sprained MCL in high right knee. He averaged 4.3 points a game as a freshman in 2001 and was regarded as one of the team's best shooters, despite a woeful shooting percentage of .336. The 'Noles hope that more playing time will show off the touch he displays in practice. Hamilton could get a midseason infusion of talent on the wing when 6-foot-4 sophomore Adrian McPherson (1.7 ppg) rejoins the basketball team after football season. The former Florida Mr. Basketball was recruited to play quarterback for Bobby Bowden's Seminoles, but he's hoping to pull off the same two-sport magic that Charlie Ward worked in Tallahassee a decade ago. It didn't work too well last year. McPherson played in just three basketball games before returning to offseason football workouts. Hamilton will wait and see how much McPherson can contribute. "He's primarily here to play football," Hamilton said. "I'm just going to allow that to take its course without doing anything to interfere." The departure of Nigel Dixon leaves a 350-pound hole in the post that Hamilton will try to fill with a pair of senior big men. Both 6-foot-10, 221-pound Trevor Harvey (4.2 ppg, 3.1 rpg) and 6-foot-10, 230-pound Mike Mathews (3.7 ppg, 2.3 rpg) are familiar to Hamilton from his days at Miami. "I haven't watched this team a lot, but I did recruit Trevor and Mike," Hamilton said. "Both have displayed a tremendous attitude, a real hunger to get better. For instance, Mike has added 18 pounds since last season, the result of hard work in the weight room." Mathews is the top returning shot blocker in the ACC and is within range of the FSU career record in that category. He doesn't but up big numbers, but he's fundamentally sound in the post. He set the screen that freed Monte Cummings to score the winning basket in FSU's upset of Duke. Harvey is the fourth-best returning shot blocker in the ACC. He's a bit more athletic than Mathews and a better rebounder. He hit .548 percent of his shots, which would have ranked among the ACC leaders if he'd had enough attempts. Hamilton also will give 6-foot-8, 230-pound sophomore Adam Waleskowski (2.9 ppg, 2.4 rpg) plenty of time in the post. He would have liked to use 6-foot-8 recruit Al Thornton, who starred in the Georgia-Florida all-star game, time on the floor, too, but Thornton was only a partial qualifier and will have to wait until next year to make his mark. Hamilton isn't a miracle worker. He's a program builder -- and it's going to take time to get Florida State out of the mess its in. Florida State finished next to last in the ACC last season and lost four starters and a top reserve. While Hamilton did some fancy scrambling to fill the talent gap, he got a late start and isn't bringing in the kind of talent -- on paper -- that league foes such as Duke, UNC and Maryland have signed. A lot will depend on his two junior college guards, Johnson and Pickett. Both have nice credentials, but jucos don't fare all that well in the ACC. It usually takes them at least a year to adapt to the league. Among the holdovers, only Richardson appears to have star potential, and he's still got a long way to go to realize it. That doesn't mean Hamilton won't get the job done in Tallahassee, just that it will be a major shock if he generates any significant improvement in his first year. For now, his most important job will be to sell his program to the FSU fans who would rather watch baseball or spring football practice than follow ACC hoops.
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