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Leonard Hamilton might one day smell the roses. He’s just not that interested to do so now as the Florida State coach winds down his hall of fame career. Hamilton’s young Seminoles will play on Wednesday night at Joel Coliseum against Wake Forest and while it’s tempting for Hamilton to wax poetically about coaching in his home state again he’s not going there.
That’s not the way the 76-year-old Gastonia native is wired. There’s always a next practice, a next game or a next opponent to worry about. In a lengthy phone interview with Hamilton over the weekend, he said when the season is over he might look back at what has transpired.
“Right now, we have practice later so that’s what I’m sort of gearing up for,” Hamilton said when asked about coming back to North Carolina again. People are also reading..
. In his 23 seasons of guiding the Seminoles he turned the program into a consistent winner at a football school. That’s not easy, but Hamilton did it without much fanfare mainly because he’s old school.
Coach Leonard Hamilton is the all-time wins leader in Florida State history and is in his 23rd season at the school. You work hard, you recruit hard, and the results will be there. “I don't have the luxury with the inexperience team that we have to look too far down the road to be honest with you,” Hamilton said.
Earlier this season it was announced by Florida State that this would be Hamilton’s final season. He took it in stride as he’s done most things in his coaching career and instead of worrying about what’s next his only concern is about his players. It's always been about the players.
He’ll get to come back to his home state again against Duke later this season, and then the Seminoles will play in the ACC Tournament in Charlotte in March. He’s travelled back to his home state so many times there’s only one that he remembers that sticks out. It was late in the 2012-13 season when the Seminoles played at North Carolina.
The way Hamilton told the story was he got off the plane, rented a car and drove to Gastonia where his 96-year-old mother was ailing. She ended up dying while he was there. “Then, I had to go back to Chapel Hill and coach and that was tough,” Hamilton said.
“I think that’s the only time that it was personal for me coming back home but all of the other times it’s a business trip and it’s about trying to win a game.” Maybe in a few years Hamilton will appreciate just how long he’s lasted in the game. All of the hall of famers in the ACC or soon to be hall of famers among the coaches are gone.
He outlasted Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Jim Larranaga and even the young whipper snapper, Tony Bennett, who also retired. “Well, you know for me personally I’ve never even thought about that,” said Hamilton, who has compiled and overall record 457-290 in his career in college as a head coach. The college basketball landscape has obviously changed in recent years and for the old-school coaches it hasn’t been an easy adjustment.
According to a report six former players of Hamilton’s are suing him alleging that he failed to uphold promises of NIL money. As the announcement of Hamilton’s retirement at the end of the season was made several reacted to the news. Coach Leonard Hamilton will be back in his home state on Wednesday as Florida State plays at Wake Forest.
Hamilton will retire at the end of this season. Krzyzewski said: “Florida State, the ACC and the sport of basketball were blessed to have Leonard in the profession for as long as he coached. While his tangible accomplishments are terrific, his impact on countless players along the way will be the greatest testament to his success.
College basketball will miss him.” And Boeheim was equally positive about Hamilton’s impact. “Well, he's a great coach,” Boeheim said.
“He did it at Miami where they hadn't won, he's done it at Florida State where they hadn't won. These are not blue-blood basketball programs, he elevated them both. He's a Hall of Fame coach in my mind, a Hall of Fame person, for sure.
” His former players such as Anthony Polite made sure to talk about Hamilton’s impact. “What he did for me at my time at Florida State and built throughout his years in Tallahassee shows that not only is he one of the best coaches, mentors, and teachers to ever coach the game, but how much he cares about his players,” said Polite, who played for the Seminoles from 2017 to 2022. Hamilton’s career in major college basketball got its start in the mid-1970’s when Joe B.
Hall hired him as an assistant. It was then when Hamilton helped Kentucky become integrated. Hamilton helped Hall and the Wildcats recruit Black players such as Jack Givens, Sam Bowie and Mel Turpin.
David Teel, an award winning sportswriter who has covered the ACC for nearly 40 years, said Hamilton was a pioneer as the first Black assistant in the SEC. “What he did as a racial pioneer back when he was the first African-American assistant coach – not just in the SEC but doing it at Kentucky – he has brought such grace to the sport and has done some much beyond the court and competition,” Teel said. If you expect Hamilton to brag about those days when he helped build the Wildcats into the 1978 national champions, you’ll be disappointed.
“My mindset was not really focused on that at the time and that was not really my goal,” Hamilton said about his days as a Black assistant coach in the SEC. “My goal was to do the very best I could with the job that I had an opportunity to have, but I never thought about it in those terms.” There was no big picture that Hamilton was looking at as he recruited Black players to Kentucky in the 1970’s.
“I didn’t have that luxury,” he said. “I was just trying to do the best job that I could.” Hamilton grew up in an era where Blacks couldn’t go wherever they wanted.
However, Hamilton’s father, John, never limited his son’s dreams. When Hamilton had his sights set on going to college it was through sports that would get him there. He played basketball at Gaston College, which was a junior college, and did well enough there to earn a scholarship at Tennessee-Martin becoming the first Black player in school history.
Hamilton remembers his father saying the family couldn’t afford to send him to college so Hamilton worked hard to get that athletic scholarship. And it was in the fourth grade when Hamilton first recalled his father giving him some sound life advice. “I grew up in an era where you listened to your parents,” Hamilton said.
“So as a youngster my father would be outside in the yard kicking around a football and I would go out there and join him and he’d always tell me ‘you can’t ever let anybody outwork you.’” That’s really been his motivation as a coach that’s carried him through all these years. There’s always film to watch, a kid to call who is interested in playing for him or there’s a player on his team who needs advice.
Hamilton is there for all of it, and he does all of this because nobody is going to outwork him. “The other advice he would give me was don’t ever come to me complaining about something being unfair,” Hamilton said. “It’s because you control your own destiny so getting there is not going to happen because of somebody else.
” Hamilton looks upon his life in basketball as something he earned by outworking others. He’s never taken it for granted as he started at Austin Peay as an assistant, then went to Kentucky before landing his first head coaching job at Oklahoma State. He went on to Miami before coaching in the NBA for one season with the Washington Wizards.
In 2002 he landed at Florida State and started to cement his name as one of the top coaches in the country. He won a conference regular-season title in the Big East in 2000 with Miami and in the ACC with the Seminoles in 2012 he won the tournament title. In 2020 the Seminoles were the regular-season champions then were awarded the conference championship when COVID-19 cancelled the rest of the tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum.
“For me as a person my entire life it's been about accepting a challenge, then you go about making sure you can't let them out work you,” Hamilton said. “Don't make no excuses when you fail, and let's figure it out and install it so I think that has probably been good for me.” Hamilton was the UPI national coach of the year in 1995, was a two-time Big East coach of the year and has been the ACC coach of the year three different times.
Even though Hamilton might not agree with everything that’s going on in college basketball he has faith in the game. Coach Leonard Hamilton (left) and Florida State’s players pose with the championship trophy after the remainder of the ACC Tournament was canceled because of COVID-19 in March of 2020. “I think that that's one of the challenges that we face as coaches,” he said.
“There are so many more distractions that young people are facing. You got everybody trying to tell them how to get to the place, but they ain’t never been to that place. So, it’s our job to steer them there.
” Hamilton has seen the game evolve and now he’ll leave it after this season but feels as if it will be OK. “The game is the game and it will continue to go on,” Hamilton said. “There's no doubt that there's a different atmosphere that we all are dealing with, but I don't have the luxury to complain about it.
You just keep working at it. That’s all I know how to do.” jdell@wsjournal.
com 336-727-4081 @johndellWSJ Schedule Tuesday's Games Syracuse at Miami | ACCN | 7 PM Pitt at SMU | ACCN | 9 PM Wednesday's Games Louisville at NC State | ESPN2 | 7 PM Florida State at Wake Forest | ESPNU | 7 PM Stanford at Georgia Tech | ACCN | 7 PM Notre Dame at Boston College | ESPNU | 9 PM California at Duke | ACCN | 9 PM Saturday's Games Miami at Pitt | ESPN2 | Noon Clemson at Florida State | The CW | Noon Boston College at NC State | ACCN | 2 PM Virginia at Virginia Tech | The CW | 2 PM Stanford at Duke | ABC | 4 PM California at Georgia Tech | ACCN | 4 PM Wake Forest at SMU | ACCN | 6 PM North Carolina at Syracuse | ESPN | 6 PM Sunday's Game Louisville at Notre Dame | ACCN | 8 PM Noteworthy • Six ACC teams stand among the top 50 in the latest NET ratings: Duke (2), Louisville (28), Clemson (30), SMU (40), North Carolina (46) and Pitt (47). • Duke ranks No. 2 nationally in the latest KenPom ratings.
Louisville (28), Clemson (29), North Carolina (41), Pitt (43) and SMU (47) also are among the top 50 teams. • Wake Forest has risen to No. 59 in the Monday NET.
The Demon Deacons have won nine of 11 games and moved up 41 spots from No. 100 on Dec. 31.
• Duke and Clemson are nationally ranked this week. Duke is No. 3 nationally in the latest Associated Press poll and No.
5 in the USA Today rankings. Clemson is No. 23 in the AP poll and No.
19 in the USA Today rankings. Louisville is receiving votes in both polls. • SMU's four-game win streak is tied for the seventh-longest active streak among power conference teams.
Duke (16), Louisville (10), Clemson (6) and Wake Forest (6) also have had long win streaks in recent weeks. • In KenPom's overall strength of schedule metric, 10 ACC teams rank among the top 70 teams nationally: UNC (11), Louisville (32), Duke (41), Pitt (42), Syracuse (54), Wake Forest (62), Clemson (63), Virginia (65) and Virginia Tech (69). • In KenPom's non-conference SOS ratings, UNC is No.
6 nationally and tops among power conference teams. Duke is No. 31, Louisville is No.
45, Pitt is No. 66 and Clemson No. 82.
Among power conference teams, Duke is eighth, Louisville 11th, Pitt 15th and Clemson 19th. • Chase Hunter (Clemson), Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel (Duke), Chucky Hepburn (Louisville), Ian Jackson (UNC), Maxime Raynaud (Stanford) and Hunter Sallis (Wake) were named to the Oscar Robertson Trophy Midseason Watch List. • Stanford's Maxime Raynaud leads the nation in double-doubles with 20 (in 24 games), matching a school single-season record.
Raynaud (11.7) ranks third nationally in rebounds per game. • Raynaud leads the ACC and ranks 11th nationally in scoring at 20.
4 points per game, while Duke's Cooper Flagg is 24th at 19.5 (first nationally among freshmen). • Louisville's Reyne Smith ranks is second nationally in 3-pointers made with 91 and third in 3-pointers made per game at 3.
79, which is on pace to be the most by an ACC player since Duke's J.J. Redick averaged 3.
9 per game during the 2005-06 season. • Duke (38.5%) ranks seventh nationally in FG percentage defense, while Wake Forest (39.
2%) is 13th. The Blue Devils are first nationally in scoring margin (+19.5 ppg) and sixth in scoring defense (60.
5 ppg). Players of the week Louisville fifth-year forward Terrence Edwards Jr. and Wake Forest senior guard Cameron Hildreth shared Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week honors, while California’s Jeremiah Wilkinson picked up Rookie of the Week honors for games played February 2-9.
Edwards Jr. and Hildreth each earned ACC weekly honors for the first time this season. Wilkinson was tabbed ACC Rookie of the Week for the third time this season and the second time in the last three weeks (December 2, January 27).
Edwards Jr. averaged 23.0 points, 8.
0 assists and 6.5 rebounds in Louisville’s wins over Boston College (84-58) and Miami (88-78). A native of Atlanta, he shot 58.
1% from the floor, 57.1% from 3-point range and a perfect 100% from the free throw line. Hildreth averaged 22.
5 points, 3.5 steals, 3.5 rebounds and 2.
0 assists in road wins over Stanford and California as the Demon Deacons became the first ACC team this season to sweep the West Coast road trip. In the 76-73 victory over Stanford on Wednesday, he had a team-high 22 points on 7-10 shooting from the field while connecting on six free throw attempts. In Saturday's 10-point victory at Cal, Hildreth once again led the Demon Deacons with 23 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the field and 6-of-7 from the free throw line as he recorded his third straight 20-point game.
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