Florida State to hire Hamilton as basketball coach

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Posted 11:56AM on Tuesday, March 19, 2002

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Leonard Hamilton will be hired as Florida State's basketball coach Tuesday after having rebuilt programs at Oklahoma State and Miami, The Associated Press has learned. The school scheduled an afternoon news conference to announce its new coach. Hamilton will succeed Steve Robinson as coach, a source close to the program told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity. Robinson was fired last week after four consecutive losing seasons. Hamilton also briefly coached the Washington Wizards. He helped revive Oklahoma State and took Miami to three NCAA appearances and two NIT tournaments between 1990 and 2000. Hamilton compiled a 144-147 record with Miami but is credited with taking the program from the bottom of the Big East to its first round of 16 appearance in the 2000 NCAA tournament. Hamilton was twice named Big East coach of the year while at Miami and was known for creating intense, defense-oriented players. He left behind a solid recruiting class for successor Perry Clark, including the nucleus of this season's NCAA tournament team. In 2000, Michael Jordan, then president of the Wizards, lured Hamilton to the NBA. Hamilton resigned after one season in which the team finished 19-63, the third worst in the league that year. Hamilton has a career record of 200-210 in 14 college seasons, including a 64-28 record in the last three seasons at Miami. The Seminoles finished 12-17 last season. Robinson was 64-86 in five years at Florida State, but just 46-72 over the last four seasons and 25-55 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Florida State scored perhaps the biggest upset of the season -- and the biggest in school history -- when it ended Duke's 22-game winning streak with a 77-76 victory on Jan. 6. But the Seminoles went 4-12 after that game. Despite a soft nonconference schedule designed to help shore up Robinson's job, Florida State made only marginal improvement on last year's 9-21 record -- the school's worst in 50 years. A coaching change had been expected since the Seminoles were upset twice in December by American and Western Carolina. The team hit rock bottom in the Atlantic Coast Conference in late January when Georgia Tech, which was winless in the conference, defeated the Seminoles 77-46. Each of Robinson's teams at Florida State struggled late in the season, managing only a 9-27 record in February.