1/16/2023 basketball Edit

Leonard Hamilton knows future rosters must lean heavier on transfers

Leonard Hamilton says "we got the memo" this time with the need to use the transfer portal more in building the FSU roster. (Mike Olivella)

Bob Ferrante • TheOsceola

Editor

Leonard Hamilton would love to recruit, develop and enjoy a team that with age produces deep and talented rosters that play their best basketball in March. The 2012 and 2020 teams that won an ACC Tournament and an ACC regular-season title, respectively, are examples of his program-building strategy where seniors or veterans led en route to championships.

The college basketball world has found a quicker method: The transfer portal.

Florida State went into the 2022-23 season with five “second-year veterans,” to use Hamilton’s tongue-in-cheek term. While the group included Houston transfer Caleb Mills, it also featured sophomores like Matthew Cleveland, Jalen Warley, Kentucky transfer Cam’Ron Fletcher and junior-college transfer Naheem McLeod. For the first time in recent memory, the Seminoles would not have a true senior on the roster or anyone who had been in the Seminoles’ system for any length of time. Gone were experienced veterans like Malik Osborne, Anthony Polite and Wyatt Wilkes — players who were effective coaches on the practice court as well as floor leaders on game days.

FSU would be forced to win with youth but Hamilton could counter with what appeared to be a deep rotation. That was before injuries to Jaylan Gainey (a Brown transer) in the preseason as well as Fletcher after 10 games. And before the appeal to the NCAA on freshman forward Baba Miller was reduced from a full season to 16 games.

“You can’t make excuses,” Hamilton said. “You just have to be prepared for the unexpected.”

Hamilton’s view of player development should be appreciated even if he feels it should be adjusted. It has won him 600 games. He has graduated all but two of the players FSU has kept on campus for four seasons over the course of the last two decades.

The long view is to be applauded for its successes, which can be measured in diplomas, titles and NBA draft picks. But Hamilton also sees a reason to alter his point of view.

“A lot of teams are being effective with the portal and getting graduate students and fifth-year guys,” Hamilton said after Saturday’s loss to Virginia. “We’ve been late to the party. But we got the memo this time. We won’t be late anymore. That’s just part of the adjustment that we have to make.”

Before the Virginia game, Hamilton said “the theme in college basketball is get old and stay old.” He’s right. That was always his plan. The plan didn’t work for 2022-23 and Hamilton now sees that. But night in and night out the younger Seminoles (5-13, 3-4 ACC) face older teams and try to compete before often falling short. They will have a chance to pick up a road win against a struggling Notre Dame on Tuesday (7 p.m. on ESPNU) and also travel to a resurgent Pittsburgh on Saturday.

Injuries have limited what Leonard Hamilton and Stan Jones (right) can do with rotations. (Mike Olivella)

How did FSU get here? If you were building a perfect storm, it would look like this:

Hamilton and FSU’s staff thought Osborne, Polite and Butler would return for this season. Osborne and Polite had graduated, with Polite an enticing European pro hoops prospect as he held Swiss citizenship and would not be counted as an American by overseas teams. Osborne’s injury left him a decision, while Butler weighed the pre-draft waters. FSU lost all three.

“At the beginning of last year, I thought Malik Osborne and Anthony Polite and John Butler will be on this team,” Hamilton said in December. “I have to make that adjustment to guys being free to make their own decisions about what they think is best for them and not necessarily what’s best for us.”

FSU landed Gainey in the spring as a version of Osborne, a defense-first forward. But Gainey was injured in a summer workout. Miller was forced to sit for the first half of the season. Fletcher’s season ended early.

“I wasn’t prepared for Gainey to get an ACL,” Hamilton reflected in December. “I wasn’t prepared for Baba to miss 16 games. You put those five guys on my team, we might be a little different. I got to do a better job of preparing for the unexpected. And I think that’s where I faltered a little bit for this particular year."

FSU started Cleveland, Mills and UCF transfer Darin Green Jr. along with Cameron Corhen and Warley against Virginia. It’s not an ideal starting five, but that really didn’t matter with the Seminoles because it was all about the rotation historically. Mix in those five with the wish-FSU-had-six of Fletcher, Gainey, Miller, Osborne, Polite and Butler and, whoa, that’s quite the deep rotation.

In fairness nobody can be faulted for the injuries to Gainey, Fletcher and Miller (now dealing with tonsilitis and is questionable for the Notre Dame game). Add in that freshmen forward De’Ante Green (knee) had surgery in his senior year of high school and that freshman guard Chandler Jackson (thumb) was limited in camp due to injury.

But the flaw in the planning was not adjusting more by hitting the portal. When Osborne told coaches he was leaving, FSU's coaches went out and grabbed Gainey. But when Polite left, there should have been a push to grab another point guard (they picked up a shooting guard in Green Jr. from UCF, who has logged heavy minutes and been productive although with inconsistent results). And they probably should have grabbed another center after allowing seldom-used Quincy Ballard to leave through the transfer portal, which meant McLeod was the only true center on the roster. (FSU has only had one true center on a roster in one season over the past decade until 2022-23.)

Ballard was a bad eval by the coaching staff, while McLeod hasn’t developed post moves or been an effective rebounder. These are further flaws in the roster building that could have been alleviated through the portal. Don't grab a center just to have one on the roster, but rim protectors have always been valued in FSU's defense.

ACC-caliber point guards and centers don’t grow on trees. They aren’t abundant in mass quantities in the transfer portal. And many will be seeking NIL deals. But these are also the realities of being competitive in college basketball in the transfer portal era.

If injuries weren’t a big factor for a snake-bit program, it’s plausible four transfers (Fletcher, Green Jr., Mills and Gainey) could be in the starting lineup or big factors in the rotation this season. Still, Hamilton thinks the Seminoles need to be even deeper into the portal. This is a new but necessary mindset in college basketball.

“You can’t get where you’re going if you first don’t understand where you are,” Hamilton said in December. “And so I’ve accepted how we got to this position. And one thing I can guarantee: It will never happen again. I’m on it. I only got to look at myself first and say, ‘What could I do and what could I have done?’ ”

The blueprint is evident: FSU has just one high school signee, Taylor Bowen, from the November signing period. And he's a good one. But it also appears the coaches are positioning themselves to hit the portal in the offseason.