This is how good Leonard Hamilton's program has become: His Florida State Seminoles just beat North Carolina without the services of arguably the best player on his team. And nobody was surprised.

That's just who the Seminoles are these days.

No Scottie Barnes? No problem. They'll go ahead and knock off the Tar Heels yet again.

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This says plenty about how far FSU has come in recent years that it could have what feels like a ho-hum 82-75 win over a North Carolina team that was (once again) ranked higher than Florida State in the preseason.

But wins like Saturday's don't just happen by chance. They don't happen by accident or luck.

This is what Florida State does. They lose a potential NBA lottery pick for a game, have two other starters slowed by injury and illness (more on that in a moment), and still manage to beat a talented team in an almost-empty gym.

It's the Seminoles' culture that was on display Saturday. They aren't like most teams.

They play a thousand guys a game. They play all different kinds of combinations. They make every player on the team feel like an important piece, and they let just about everyone on the team play critical minutes.

The primary reason Hamilton does this is so his team can be the fresher one in the final minutes of a game -- and, perhaps more importantly, in the final weeks of a season.

But one of the major benefits of a philosophy like this is that when someone like Barnes goes down, the Seminoles don't freak out. They don't have a "what-are-we-gonna-do-now" attitude. They don't throw their hands to the heavens and ask, "Why have the basketball gods forsaken us?"

No. They just plug in RayQuan Evans, and he plays like a starter.

And the other guys pick up the slack, because that's the only thing they know.

That, my friends, is culture.

"We try to develop a rotation where if someone does go down, turns an ankle or gets in foul trouble, that we're able to put somebody in there and they deliver," Hamilton said. "I was very proud of our guys today. Sardaar (Calhoun), Evans, (Tanor) Ngom, (Nate) Jack and Malik (Osborne) and Wyatt (Wilkes), that's who we are. We win games by committee. That's how we built our program.

"There's no doubt that was a culture win for us today. Everybody's cheering for one another, sharing the ball, sharing playing time. No one's jealous of one another. That's been the strength of our program. And I'm very proud of them."

I think we're so used so to seeing these kinds of performances from Hamilton's program that we might take them for granted.

We shouldn't, of course, but it's something that's been happening around here for years.

M.J. Walker has missed games. Terance Mann missed games. Devin Vassell was suspended for a game last year (an important one). Phil Cofer dealt with some serious injuries and then the death of his father during the NCAA Tournament, and the Seminoles have just continued to step up and make plays.

I'm still a believer, by the way, that if Cofer and David Nichols were able to play two years ago in the Sweet 16 vs. Gonzaga, that team would have made the Final Four. But the fact they made it to the Sweet 16 without those two standouts speaks to what I'm writing about.

When you develop depth the way FSU does, you never feel at a loss, even when one of your best players goes down.

When Hamilton got to the Seminoles' basketball facility Saturday morning, he thought there was a chance he'd be down three starters -- Anthony Polite was "under the weather" and M.J. Walker had a knee strain.

And when Walker went down in the second half with an ankle injury and had to be helped off the floor, it would've been understandable to think the Tar Heels were about to go on a run. After all, how many teams can withstand their two best players not being on the court for a critical stretch?

All FSU did was get a steal from Balsa Koprivica (who had a terrific performance, by the way, with 10 points and nine rebounds), which led to a corner 3 from Calhoun. That sparked an 11-3 run. All with Walker on the bench. And Barnes in street clothes.

Ho-hum.

"We've been in situations like that all the time, man," said Walker, who had a game-high 21 points. "I remember we went to March Madness and bodies were just dropping off because of injuries and stuff like that. So, we've been in situations like that all the time. It's just a matter of us adjusting and figuring out a way to get through it.

"We prepare for situations like that all the time."

It shows.

Contact senior writer Corey Clark at corey@warchant.com and follow @Corey_Clark on Twitter.

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