2024-2025 FSU basketball preseason roster, schedule preview: What to expect from Seminoles offense, defense

The Florida State Seminoles are just weeks away from tipping off their 2024-25 basketball season, looking to continue an upward trajectory after a major year-to-year jump from 2022-2023 (205th to 79th in KenPom).

Roster turnover and a tough ACC schedule will make that even more of a challenge heading into the 22nd year of head coach Leonard Hamilton’s tenure — the final of his current contract. We’ve already broken down the roster in full article form (available here, in case you missed it) but for those of you finding for a new episode of the Gospel of Ham Florida State basketball podcast, we’ve got a fresh one on deck breaking down the players on this year’s squad, the schedule that awaits them and more:

• 1:45 - Opening discussion on Tony Bennett retiring and the NIL/Portal landscape

 I feel like if you’ve been paying attention to the world of college basketball for the last two, three, four years, it wasn’t like this is coming out of nowhere. And quite honestly, basketball is often at the forefront of some of this before football. I wouldn’t be shocked if some of this starts to happen in football too. He didn’t love the system. I can’t blame him. I am in favor of players getting paid, I’m in favor of players having the ability to move around, but there’s gotta be some rules to it that kind of make sense.It makes me wonder if sometimes, not we, you and me, but we, the general public, underestimate Leonard Hamilton’s pure competitive fire and passion for the game of basketball, because the entire landscape is so different from when he first started coaching.

15:00 - 2024-25 Roster

For the first time since the year before the Scottie Barnes year, I think the coaching staff finally decided, okay, if we’re going to run this defense and stuff, the system that we want to run, we need to have some players. that just 1 through 12 fit the system.The high-end talent of, of multiple lottery picks — FSU doesn’t have that. They might have four G League players on this roster. But what they do have is, I really don’t know that there’s a big difference between the fourth-best player and the ninth-best player.And they’re all about 6-foot-7. They’re all fairly, at least on film laterally quick. And if you think to yourself that, well, if Jamir gets you 20 a game, I really don’t care if anyone else averages more than 10 or 11, because you’re gonna create a lot of steals. You’re going to have a lot of lobs and you’re going to create a lot of just like kind of chaos out there with a bunch of 6-7 guys.And maybe, maybe that can work

• 19:10 - The Jamir Watkins Offense

I would love to see this just be like Jamir’s team. Just give him the ball, get out of the way. Watkins had 28.2% usage rate last year — that means that the possession either ended with Jameer shooting, rebounding, or turning it over.Toney Douglas, in 2009, was 27.6. So actually, last year, Jamir was already At the same usage rate as Toney Douglas. I mean, how, how high can you ratchet it up? 

• 31:00 - So about the defense...

What is Ham gonna do with the defense? 10 new faces out there — you know this defense that takes two or three years to really understand.

• 42:00 - The Schedule

If they’re not 3-0 heading into the Florida game, we’re already going to have some red flags raised.... get through Florida, say three and one, then who knows? The rest of the rest of the out of conference schedule is not that tough.20 ACC games — is it a top three league this year? Who’s gonna win it? 

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