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TALLAHASSEE -- Florida State announced Wednesday that the contract of men’s basketball coach Leonard Hamilton has been extended through the 2016-17 season.
Hamilton will earn a $750,000 raise, making him the second-highest paid coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference, earning $2.25 million annually, second only to Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.
“We are excited to have Coach Hamilton continue to lead our basketball program at Florida State through the 2016-17 season,” FSU president Eric J. Barron said in a statement.
“Coach Hamilton has led this program to unprecedented success, including the first ACC championship in school history, and eight straight postseason appearances. He is the second-longest tenured coach in the conference, and under his leadership FSU is in excellent position entering the new ACC, which is the strongest basketball conference in the nation.”
Since arriving at Florida State in 2002, Hamilton has graduated 94 percent of his players while helping to raise Florida State’s basketball program to the third-winningest program in the ACC since the 2005-06 season.
In the 2010-11 season, Hamilton’s team made it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. The following season, the Seminoles won the conference tournament in Atlanta to earn the first ACC title in school history. Last season though, largely because of losing six players from its conference championship team, FSU finished just 18-16 and was knocked out of the NIT in the first round by Louisiana Tech.
Hamilton is 219-143 in his career at Florida State and 419-353 overall. Before coaching the Seminoles, he headed up the programs at Oklahoma State and the University of Miami, and also coached a season for the Washington Wizards in the 2000-01 NBA season.
“I am extremely thankful to President Eric Barron and our administration for allowing us to continue to build upon the foundation that we have worked so hard to put into place in my first 11 years at Florida State,” Hamilton said in a statement. “We are excited for our university and our basketball program as we enter a new era in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is now the best league in the history of college basketball.”
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