Florida State has been on the rise seemingly forever under coach Leonard Hamilton. He's won the conference Coach of the Year award twice, but has only won the ACC Tournament once since he took over in 2002. However, this year has been something of a renaissance season for FSU basketball as they're 18-2 and looking like a scary team to play in the already stacked ACC.
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They've been so good that CBS Sports' Gary Parrish is convinced that this team is going to the Final Four. Somewhere it hasn't been since 1972 when it lost to John Wooden's dynastic UCLA team. Parrish wrote an article about what the season means for the Seminoles and outlined how Hamilton has never won an outright conference title and how he could pull that off this year.
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With savvy veterans like Xavier Rathan-Mayes, Michael Ojo, Phil Cofer, P.J. Savoy, Terance Mann and Christ Koumadje this team has the perfect amount of good older players mixed with top freshmen like Jonathan Isaac and C.J. Walker to give them excellent depth, which is something you need in tournament play. Here's what Parrish said about the Noles and how good they can be:
FSU is positioned to win an outright league title — not to mention earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. And, yes, the latter is very much on the table because Florida State will enter Wednesday's game at Georgia Tech with A) a 6-1 record against top-25 RPI teams, B) a 9-1 record against top-50 RPI teams, C) zero losses to schools ranked outside of the top 70 of the RPI, and D) zero home losses.
His final remarks? "That's a strong resume. And, absolutely, this is a Final-Four caliber team." If you're a Seminoles fan you''ll be enjoying much more than football season in 2017.
