New-look FSU men's basketball team opens up preseason practice

It was unlike any season Leonard Hamilton and associate head coach Stan Jones had ever experienced.

Due to a rash of ailments and injuries, at just about every position on the floor, the Florida State men’s basketball team endured a 2021-22 campaign that featured some memorable wins but will mostly be remembered for all the missed games by starters and contributors.

The Seminoles finished the year 17-14 overall and missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016 (they would have been a very high seed in the 2020 tournament had it been played).

Hamilton’s program returns some firepower from last season — most notably leading scorers Caleb Mills (12.7 points per game) and Matthew Cleveland (11.5 points per game) — but the ‘Noles also are welcoming in eight new players to the roster.

The first official practice is this afternoon. But FSU’s coaches already have a pretty good idea of what they have.

“We really took our time this summer with our allowable summer work and then the 10 practices we could have,” Jones said. “That trip to Canada was huge for this team. … We really took a lot of our time this summer and sacrificed maybe some conditioning, sacrificed maybe a little intensive stuff, and really tried to make sure these guys had a thorough visualization of what we’re trying to do in all our base stuff. …

“We have a baseline in right now where these guys can hit those things and we can speed those reps up a little bit, so we can get those done in practice. So we can now have more time to work on those little other things we have to put in — playbook things and defensive adjustments we’re going to do when we’re coming out with something different. I thought our summer was really good for us.”

Jones, who has been on Hamilton’s staff since the mid-1990s at Miami, said the games in Canada — the Seminoles won all three exhibitions easily — were a great teaching moment for the team. The trip allowed them to put work on film and evaluate a group of players who, by and large, have very little experience wearing a Florida State uniform.

Mills and Cleveland are second-year players in the system … and they’re two of the “veterans.”

Kentucky transfer Cam’Ron Fletcher, sophomore point guard Jalen Warley and sophomore center Naheem McLeod are all in their second years as well.

Other than that, every FSU scholarship player is new.

Freshmen Tom House, Chandler Jackson, Cameron Corhen, De’Ante Green, Jeremiah Bembry and Baba Miller join UCF transfer Darin Green and Brown transfer Jaylan Gainey as players trying to work themselves into the rotation during their first year on campus.

Jones said he likes what he has seen from the new guys so far, but admitted the next 30 practices will dictate who gets court time when the season begins.

“These offseason workouts we’ve been having prior to this week, nobody has been earning playing time,” Jones said. “This has all been evaluation time by us of what you can and can’t do. … Now, these next 30 days are going to determine roles, minutes, priority shots, and all those things. Those start getting earned now in our practices, scrimmages and exhibitions we’re going to do.

“So, when we get to that Nov. 7 game, we have an idea on how we want to start our roles.”

Jones added that roles can change throughout the season, but they purposely didn’t chart shots — misses and makes — as much as they normally do during the summer because they want to start charting now, with real playing time on the line as the season opener approaches.

This summer was more for teaching.

Now, they will begin figuring out which players they can count on to perform different roles. And they also will look for leadership to emerge on a team that doesn’t feature any seniors.

Mainstays like Malik Osborne, Anthony Polite and Wyatt Wilkes are no longer on the team. There isn’t much of a veteran presence at all, but that doesn’t mean there are no leaders. The next 30 days will go a long way in determining that as well.

“That will be a season-long project,” Jones said. “You don’t lead by how old you are, you don’t lead by how many points you score. You lead by your voice and you lead by your productive ego. … There is ego involved. It has to inspire the group. And the great ones have always been able to do that. They’ve been able to lead by example. They’ve been able to lead with their voice.”

And occasionally, Jones said, you have to have leaders who just pick the team up in a close game and carry it across the finish line with big-time plays in clutch moments.

“You’ve got to have some of that from different sources throughout the course of the season for your team to become a team of substance and significance,” he said.

FSU opens the season at home against Stetson on Nov. 7.

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