Florida State’s men’s basketball team may have missed out on postseason for the first time in a decade this past season, but the Seminoles are looking to a bright future nonetheless. Head coach Leonard Hamilton will be welcoming in perhaps his best recruiting class ever, but the biggest reason for future optimism for FSU on the hardwood may be due to a player who announced Thursday that he will be returning.
On Wednesday, Florida State guard Xavier Rathan-Mayes was named to the Kyle Macy Freshman All-American team. A redshirt freshman, Rathan-Mayes was one of five ACC players to lead his team in both scoring and assists.
Averaging nearly 15 points-per-game, Rathan-Mayes became the first FSU freshman to lead the team in scoring in over six decades and his 4.3 assists-per-game average is the most for any Seminole since Delvon Arrington averaged over six as a senior during the 2001-02 season. As remarkable as Rathan-Mayes’ 2014-15 campaign was, there is reason to believe he will only get better.
During the course of the season, Rathan-Mayes broke the 30-point mark on three occasions and twice scored 35 points to set a new FSU freshman scoring record. The most memorable of those efforts came against rival Miami on February 25th when Rathan-Mayes accounted for 30 points in a span of just over four and a half minutes in an 81-77 loss.
Perhaps making Rathan-Mayes’ accomplishments more remarkable is the fact that it had been two seasons since he had last played meaningful basketball. A Canadian native and standout at Huntington Prep, Rathan-Mayes was ruled academically ineligible prior to the start of the 2013-14 season.
Though big expectations followed Rathan-Mayes from Ontario to West Virginia to Tallahassee, he wasn’t expected to carry the offensive load in 2014-15. The Seminoles suffered a huge blow in early December when it was learned the previous season’s leading scorer, Aaron Thomas, had been ruled ineligible.
After not playing in the season-opener against Manhattan and being held to a total of five combined points in his first two games as a Seminole, Rathan-Mayes quickly became the guy FSU looked to for offense. Coming out of Huntington Prep, it wasn’t a secret that Rathan-Mayes could fill it up, but the assist numbers came as surprise to even the more optimistic Seminole fans.
Rathan-Mayes tallied a career-high 11 assists against Virginia Tech in a 73-65 victory on February 7th and finished with 9 dimes on three other occasions. Rathan-Mayes finished seventh in the ACC in that category despite inconsistent play from FSU’s post players and having only one player who could regularly stretch the floor in fellow guard Devon Bookert.
The biggest knocks on Rathan-Mayes were a pedestrian field goal percentage of under 42 percent and high turnover numbers, but those figures may be a case of Rathan-Mayes simply being forced to do too much. Expect those areas to improve next season as Rathan-Mayes will have more offensive help thanks to an incoming class headlined by McDonalds All-American Dwayne Bacon.
While Bacon is the prize of Hamilton’s newest class, fellow newcomers Terance Mann and Malik Beasley are also expected to contribute right away. It’s entirely possible that Seminoles could lose only one player from this year’s team as well and have a squad next season comprised of four seniors.
Though Florida State may have missed out on playing in a postseason tournament for the first time in a decade, the past season could have been much worse. After a 4-5 start and losing its best player on each end of the floor, FSU rallied to complete its 10th straight winning season while knocking off rival Florida for the first time in five years in the process.
The incoming class of freshmen is enough to make any Seminole fan optimistic about the future of the program, but as in any sport, leadership is key. With a prolific scorer who has already proven capable of making his teammates better as the captain of the ship, it may not be long before FSU is again a force to be reckoned with in the ACC.
