Last season, Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton molded the strongest defense in the ACC, which compensated for the league’s 10th-ranked offense and earned them third place overall in the ACC.
FSU led the ACC in scoring defense with 60.4 points per game and on average 6.3 blocked shots per game in its 2009-10 campaign. But this season the Seminoles will be without the ACC’s leading shot-blocker, Solomon Alabi.
With the Seminoles picked to finish fifth in the ACC, the backcourt of Derwin Kitchen, Michael Snaer and Deividas Dulkys will be bolstered by freshman recruit Ian Miller.
Hamilton brought on Miller, a Charlotte native and point guard, in hopes that he will bring a new wind to a struggling veteran offense.
“The point guard play is more important,” Hamilton said at ACC Media Day. “Last year with the development of Deividas, Chris (Singleton) and Mike (Snaer) on the wings, it highlighted some of the issues that our point guards had. I think overall as a team, we have not been as sound fundamentally as we would like to have been.”
Senior guard Kitchen averaged 8.1 points per game, but that should improve with the addition of a skilled distributor such as Miller.
“We’re going to be better because we have a lot of players coming back and people understanding and maturing from last year,” Kitchen said. “We’re really going to clean up our offense this year.”
Junior forward Singleton, the reigning ACC defensive player of the year, earns recognition as part of the preseason All-ACC First Team. Last year, he led the ACC with 2.2 steals per game and ranked fifth in blocks with 1.5 a game.
“We definitely have a better rotation, more bodies to fill in at every position,” Singleton said. “Every position, I feel like we can go at least two or three deep so it’s going to be a great team.”
