TALLAHASSEE -- Florida State has had bigger wins in the past than the ones the
Seminoles racked up these past few weeks.
The Seminoles were an NCAA finalist in 1972, an Elite Eight team in 1993 and a Sweet 16 team in 1992 and 2011.
But Florida State might have just polished off the best eight-day run in a regular season of any unranked college basketball program.
First, there was a 33-point white-washing of No. 3 North Carolina at home. Then a 14-point win over Maryland. And more recently, a buzzer-beating victory at No. 4 Duke.
"It's one of the best weeks of our lives as players," Florida State senior guard Luke Loucks said. ". . . As a player that's what we were recruited here to do. Kind of turn around a program. Coaches have preached to us that message since we got here. And I think that's what we're doing, taking the steps toward being a program of relevance."
Florida State has had big wins under coach Leonard Hamilton. The most memorable have been the nine wins over top-5 teams since 2003, including the two in the past few days.
But when Loucks references becoming "a program of relevance," he means that Florida State has made noise here and there during the regular season but hasn't historically been that relevant in March.
At first, it was a big deal when Florida State earned a berth in the NCAA Tournament, which they did in 2009, ending an 11-year drought. After two years of first-round exits in the Big Dance, Florida State attracted attention in the NCAA Tournament last March by knocking off Texas A&M and Notre Dame to reach the Sweet 16 (and coming just a basket short of defeating VCU).
But it's a funny thing about success — that run pushed Florida State into summer practice, but it became a crutch once the season began. The Seminoles leaned on that success as a crutch and then opened the ACC schedule with a 20-point loss to Clemson, dropping Florida State to 9-6 for the season.
"I think some complacency snuck in," Loucks said. "We lost some of the fire and passion. Over the summer we were working so hard, and once the season got here, we took a step back and let off the gas a bit. Whenever you do that, any decent opponent is going to beat you. That's what happened."
Motivated by a humbling triple-overtime loss to Princeton and the blowout at Clemson, Florida State has turned things around.
The Seminoles have won four straight ACC games, including upsets of No. 3 North Carolina in Tallahassee and No. 4 Duke at Cameron Indoor. It's the first time since the 2001-02 season that Florida State has wins over the Tar Heels and Blue Devils, and it leaves Florida State in rare territory in mid-January — atop the ACC standings at 4-1 along with Duke and N.C. State.
And think about this: Florida State survived one of the toughest five-game stretches that any team in the country will have to endure. The Seminoles lost at Clemson, regrouped to win at Virginia Tech and then knocked off UNC, Maryland and Duke. Winning four out of those five games would make most coaches thrilled.
The road ahead is favorable for the next seven games. Florida State (13-6, 4-1) will travel to Wake Forest (11-8, 2-3) on Wednesday, and then the Seminoles will have four of the next five games at home. They will play only one ranked team, No. 21 Virginia. And Florida State has a chance to feast on the bottom three of the ACC (Miami, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech) before mid-February.
The chance to play for the regular-season ACC title, something that Florida State has never won, is very real.
Hamilton is famous for wearing his emotion on his sleeves during games but being even-keel after. He didn't even crack a smile after the Duke upset. He let players celebrate and enjoy the well-deserved win in the locker room. And then he reminded them of the big picture.
"The first thing Coach Hamilton said was, ‘Four wins is not going to win the ACC,'" center Bernard James said.
Now, Florida State, which is ranked 23rd by The Associated Press but remains unranked in the coaches' poll, is in the conference race — albeit one that has 11 games left. Hamilton likes to say after a big win that he's curious how Florida State will respond. He thinks that the next game at Wake Forest will be a mental challenge.
"This could be the most important game of the season for us because we've played some emotional games," Hamilton said. ". . . The challenge for us is to see if we can show the level of maturity that it takes, to show the level of maturity that teams of significance play regardless of who they play. That's the next step."
Hamilton was a longtime assistant coach at Kentucky, including during their national title in 1977-78, so he's been part of teams of significance. He's tried to bring that approach to Florida State the past 10 seasons.
But he's also trying to turn the perception of Florida State into a brand, a name in college basketball that resonates. And part of it is making players believe in themselves and believe that they are just as good — and often better — as the Dukes and the North Carolinas.
"Now when it appears that you're making progress, can we turn it up another notch?" Hamilton said. "That's what programs do. I know that's part of the development stage that programs go through, becoming ‘good' to ‘better than good,' or whatever that category is.
"We've shown people that we can be pretty good, but have we shown people that we have more respect for the name on the front of our shirts than we do the name on the front of our opponents' shirts?"
