When I interviewed him last Monday -- on the day the 2020 NCAA championship game was supposed to be played -- Florida State basketball coach Leonard Hamilton admitted how painful it was that his Seminoles' magical season was cut short.

And while he didn't come right out and say it, he most definitely believed they had a chance to be playing that night in Atlanta.

Sadly, they never got that chance. And now, Hamilton has lost his three best players from that team. Starting point guard and team captain Trent Forrest graduated, and Patrick Williams and Devin Vassell declared early for the NBA Draft (which, we guess will happen at some point ... who knows?).

That's the bad news.

The good news is this: Florida State isn't going anywhere.

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Despite losing an all-time great Seminole and two probable first-round picks, the Seminoles should be very good again in 2020-'21. And maybe even equally as important, they are expected to be good again in 2020-'21.

It was telling during our conversation last week how often Hamilton mentioned the fact that the Seminoles started the last three seasons unranked. (Which wasn't exactly true, but it was close enough.)

In 2017-'18 -- coming off a second-round NCAA Tournament finish and a 26-9 record the year before -- the Seminoles weren't in any preseason Top 25 lists. They had, after all, lost Jonathan Isaac, Dwayne Bacon and Xavier Rathan-Mayes off that team. And programs like Florida State just don't reload after those types of losses.

All the 2017-'18 team did was advance to the Elite 8 of the NCAA Tournament and come within a possession or two of the Final Four.

In 2018-'19 -- coming off that Elite 8 season -- the Seminoles were ranked just 17th in the country to start the season. Despite returning a majority of the roster from that almost-Final Four squad, the voters still weren't quite buying FSU as a legitimate power. They had 16 teams ranked ahead of the Seminoles when the season began.