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9 potential candidates to replace Leonard Hamilton at Florida State

Florida State Seminoles head coach Leonard Hamilton watches his team from the sideline. The Florida State Seminoles hosted the Virginia Tech Hokies for a menÕs basketball game Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025.
Florida State Seminoles head coach Leonard Hamilton watches his team from the sideline. The Florida State Seminoles hosted the Virginia Tech Hokies for a menÕs basketball game Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. | Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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Takayo Siddle

Despite being just 38 years old, Siddle has already had quite the eventful coaching career, though his head coaching journey is still relatively new. Instead of wasting time on hypotheticals, we’ll start detailing a journey that began as a player at Gardner-Webb in the late 2000’s but also included his time in high school playing for Kevin Keatts.

Siddle would return to his alma mater as an assistant under Chris Holtmann, the current DePaul head coach, but would later reunited with Keatts, serving under him at UNC Wilmington and NC State for a pair of 3-year stretches. Siddle’s own head coaching career would begin when UNC Wilmington put him in charge in 2020, then just 33 years old. While he’s yet to lead the Seahawks to the Big Dance, he’s engineered a turnaround with that program, with a CBI championship and nearly 100 wins under his belt.

The former CAA Coach of the Year has done wonderful things and is another rising name in coaching circles. He’s coached and worked in the ACC with the Wolfpack, he’s shown promise as a young head coach, even if his breakthrough hasn’t quite come yet with those Seahawks. There are questions of inexperience, but Siddle is a name we’ll likely hear filling one of these high-profile jobs in the coming years, it’s all about if he can make a splash when handed the keys of a program like Florida State.