Florida State finishes college basketball season ranked No. 4

Without the coronavirus, Thursday would be the first round of March Madness. Plenty of people would have picked Florida State as a Final Four team. They didn’t get the chance to prove it on the court, but today, the Noles finished the season ranked No. 4 in the final Associated Press college basketball poll.

It was well deserved. After all, the Noles went 26-5 this year. They won the ACC and were awarded the conference’s automatic bid after the conference tournament was canceled. It’s a shame that we won’t know what the Noles could have done in the postseason. They were one of the few teams to avoid bad losses this season. And aside from No. 1 Kansas, there weren’t many other teams with a better resume than Leonard Hamilton’s team.

The last time Florida State was ranked as high, they rose to the No. 2 ranking during the 1972-73 season-the year after the Seminoles earned a spot in the Final Four.

Kansas received all but two of the first-place votes in the final poll. Second-ranked Gonzaga and No. 3 Dayton each received one first-place vote. The Southeastern Conference had a pair of teams in the poll. Kentucky was ranked eighth, while Auburn came in at No. 20.