Montay Brandon, a highly rated perimeter player out of North Carolina, committed to the Seminoles today while on his official visit. This was completely expected and would have been concerning had he not ended up at FSU. Brandon is a legit 6'6 and hopes to finish his college career as a point guard. However, like most Leonard Hamilton recruits, he has flashes of point guard skills, but is unpolished at this point.

When all is said and done, Brandon will end up as a consensus top-100 recruit. He's currently rated as a 3* by ESPN, a 4* by Rivals (#59 nationally) and a 4* by Scout (#84 nationally). He has somewhat of a unique skillset and Noles should be very encouraged by this commit. Many experts have projected him as a small forward, but he definitely has the guard skills in creating his own shot. He has a solid mid-range game and knows how to take advantage of smaller defenders. And as you'll see in his video, he has high-major athleticism.

Brandon chose FSU over Tennessee, Georgia Tech and Missouri. This is Hamilton's 3rd elite recruit out of North Carolina in as many years.

According to Jeff Goodman of CBS Sports, 6'2" combo guard Devon Bookert has committed to the Noles. He was the player of the year in Alaska, and recently re-classed from 2011 to 2012 rather than committing to Cal where he could have played immediately. In the interim he will be spending a season at the Impact Basketball Academy in Las Vegas.

Bookert was a late bloomer, not garnering D1 interest until his senior season. This is a savvy move by Leonard Hamilton, as Bookert is still learning the PG position and could not have contributed right away. His high school coach - who also coached Duke's Trajan Langdon - says the two players are similar. "He loves the game," he said. " He refuses to get outworked and is very competitive. He's just a good all-around, well-rounded player. He's a lot like Trajan -- he handles the ball better while Trajan was a better shooter."

If you followed FSU basketball at Tomahawk Nation in recent years then you know that FSU is absolutely terrible at scheduling, and our failure to schedule smartly has not only cost us seeding in the NCAA Tournament, but was the reason we were left out altogether for a minimum of two years. An article I published a few weeks ago showed that FSU not only had the dumbest schedule in the ACC, but had the 2nd worst schedule in the entire country.

Well, FSU's schedule hasn't been released yet, but already there is good news. In addition to our annual tilt with Florida, and our annual ACC-Big10 Challenge game (Michigan State), we're also competing in the Battle 4 Atlantis which includes Harvard, UConn, UCF, Utah, Umass, UNC-Ashville and College of Charleston (we'll play three of those teams, and our RPI will benefit). We also have scheduled matches against Charleston Southern (smart), UNC-Greensboro (horrendously stupid), Jacksonville (smart) and Stetson (meh, bordering on dumb).

Then today it was announced that we would be playing a 2-game series vs UCF. This year we get them at home. Now we have roughly 5 spots to fill, and if we continue to schedule smartly, this will be a schedule that actually helps us get into the NCAA Tournament, rather than one that stacks the odds against us.

Aaron Thomas, perhaps the most gifted of the incoming basketball recruits, did not qualify for Florida State and is instead enrolling for a post-graduate year at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire, this according to the wunder-kid recruiting guru, Alex Kline.

It was first noted here last week that the "writing was on the wall" concerning Aaron Thomas, as the other two freshmen - Antwan Space and Terry Whisnant - were already on campus, enrolled in classes and participating in drills and workouts with their teammates.

Here is how Tomahawk Nation described Thomas on May 3rd.

 Aaron Thomas might be the most intriguing player coming to FSU next season. He's from a tough neighborhood, in a tough city, and luckily he had a family who kept him focused and away from the bad influences. He comes in with the reputation as a gym rat, and spent 4-years at two different high schools developing from a kid who would get upset whenever another player touched him, to a grinding, slashing guard who's one of the more physical guards in this class. He has NBA size at 2-guard, and is coming to FSU specifically because of Hamilton's tough love approach and his ability to develop players into NBA talents (behind only Duke and UNC in NBA draft picks during his tenure).

Here's hoping he gets his situation in order and makes it to Florida State.

Chris Singleton became the 10th Seminole in history to be drafted in the first round of the NBA Draft. He was taken 18th by Washington. It was rumored that Singleton would be drafted anywhere from 12th to 23rd, and many thought he was a lock to join Toney Douglas in New York if he fell as far as 17. But the Knicks surprised everyone by drafting Iman Shumpert out of Georgia Tech. Singleton left FSU after his junior season, and is all over the career Seminole boards, including top-10 in Steals and Blocks, and he has one of the only triple-doubles in NCAA history which involved steals.

Singleton is the third 1st rounder of the Leonard Hamilton era, and the 8th NBA pick overall. He joins Al Thornton (14) and Toney Douglas (29) as 1st rounders.

With this pick Florida State became the only college in the country to have players drafted in the 1st round of the 2011 NBA, NFL and MLB drafts.

Here's the complete list of 1st round draft picks in Seminole history. Congrats to Chris.

According to Jeff Goodman (CBS), who's one of the extremely reliable basketball writers out there, Arkansas transfer Jeff Peterson will be visiting FSU this weekend. He'd have one year of eligibility and could play immediately. He'd likely backup Ian Miller and Luke Loucks and provide bench minutes as a ball handler. If the roster progresses the way I think it will, then having some depth in case of injury is a smart move by the staff.

Why is this news? Because the Noles are already one scholarship over the limit.

So how will this shake out? Regardless of whether or not we land Peterson, it appears that not only is a current scholarship player gone - most likely through a Pierre Jordan transfer - but someone else is gone as well. Considering that Kiel Turpin, Terry Whisnant and Antwan Space are already on campus and Aaron Thomas isn't - well, the writing is on the wall.

The Seminole basketball team reached a new level of popularity during the regular season in 2010-11, finishing 3rd in the ACC and seeing one of the top-5 attendance jumps in the country. Then they capitalized on the momentum by reaching the Sweet 16 for only the 4th time in program history. Leonard Hamilton has mentioned on numerous occasions how having a star like Chris Singleton commit to the Noles makes it possible for other top recruits to come here. So now - due to the most successful season in nearly 20 years - is the time to capitalize on that, and if everything comes together then the 2012 class will be a program changer.

But what about the 2011 class? They've seen Singleton, Michael Snaer and Ian Miller all commit to the Seminoles. They just hadn't - prior to their commitment at least - seen FSU find success in the NCAA Tournament. So they committed with the understanding that they're coming in to push FSU to that next level. Do they have what it takes?

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Shortly after being named the new Athletic Director at the University of Miami, Sean Eichorst has just made his first major move by luring head coach Jim Larranaga away from George Mason. Much has been made of Larranaga’s age (61), which is immaterial as Miami isn’t a destination job. If he has a successful 5-7 year run at Miami and then retires, it’s no different than a young coach coming in, finding success, and then departing Coral Gables for a higher profile job.

The other storyline is that this is a homerun hire since George Mason was able to make a run to the Final-4 in 2006. And if you’re a fan (or a writer) who likes to evaluate teams on a terribly small sample size (the NCAA Tourney) rather than a statistically robust sample size (one or multiple seasons), then by all means, knock yourself out. But the road is littered with mid-major coaches who failed to make an impact at the major conference level despite everyone’s insistence that they’re a great X’s and O’s guy (citing their tournament run). This doesn’t mean that Larranaga is going to join that group, but predicting future success based on 4 games in March, 2006, is only slightly more valid than predicting success due to the fact that he wears boxer briefs.

Larranaga does have the opportunity for instant success with the Hurricanes. As I pointed out earlier, Miami is one of the least affected teams in the conference this year in terms of graduating seniors. If Reggie Johnson withdraws his name from the NBA draft, then the Hurricanes will have the talent to finish in the top-4 in the ACC. That alone would qualify this as a good hire as Miami has never had a winning conference record in the ACC.

Larranaga’s hiring certainly continues one trend in the ACC – the departure of black head basketball coaches. Just over two years ago the ACC had 7 black head coaches, and now have one (FSU’s Leonard Hamilton). Another trend I’ve been harping on lately is the ACC going from an up-tempo, exciting conference, to a low tempo, grinding conference. How does Larranaga fit in?

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Dennis Gates, a graduate assistant at FSU while Al Thornton was here, has returned to the Seminole program as a replacement for Andy Enfield. After Enfield moved on to his head coaching position at Florida Gulf Coast I predicted that the new coach would be four things - young, black, ties to the NBA, and ties to coach Leonard Hamilton - and Gates (31) fits on all four accounts.

Gates played college basketball at UC Berkeley (Cal), coming out of the Chicago high school system as a highly ranked guard who never found his place in the college game, at least on the floor. He was still a team leader though, and as a sign of this he was named the co-captain of the team for his sophomore through senior seasons, and he earned the highest academic award available in the conference - the Pac 10 Medal of Honor.

Following graduation he worked in the player-development segment of the LA Clippers organization, and then as a GA, 1st at Marquette and then at Florida State. Following his Master's degree from FSU he worked as a full-time assistant at Cal, Northern Illinois, and Nevada.

Ideally, assistants on the college basketball level come into the program for 3-5 years, and then leave as head coaches. Gates fits this career trajectory. His job at FSU will be what typical assistants do, which is to mimic the head coach during practice when players are broken into skill groups, to scout opponents, and most importantly, to recruit. It's this last component that makes Gates an interesting hire. He both played high school basketball in Chicago, and coached at Northern Illinois. As an assistant at Cal he recruited Jerome Randle from Chicago, who just happened to finish his career as Cal's all-time leading scorer. Florida State is currently recruiting several Chicago area players, including Billy Garrett Jr., one of the top sophomore PG's in the country.