Luke Loucks pokes fun at Florida State hanging 2020 banner amid COVID-canceled NCAA Tournament

Florida State basketball coach Luke Loucks thinks it’s healthy to make fun of yourself, so making jokes about banners is cool! The Seminoles once hung up a banner for their 2019-20 team that finished No. 4 in the country, but did not play any postseason basketball.

The COVID pandemic hit the United States and all sports were canceled, including the entire NCAA basketball postseason. A missed opportunity for Florida State that year considering that was a team that could’ve made a Final Four run or better.

For context, Loucks hit the Barstool Chicago offices for an in-person interview because personality Dan “Big Cat” Katz bought the famed banner. Florida State took it out of the rafters and had no plans to put it back up.

So, Loucks loved the idea of Barstool Sports getting a hold of it and honoring that team. Honoring is part of it, but there is a joke to it.

“There was a little bit of pushback internally, like we’re making fun, yeah, I love making fun of ourselves,” Loucks said on Pardon My Take. “But also to celebrate that team, man. And I know Florida State basketball hasn’t had a ton of unbelievable teams. Won the ACC championship a couple times, back in ‘72 they lost in the championship to UCLA in that run, but there hasn’t been a ton of teams that were at that level. 

“So I kind of understand a weird way why they wanted to celebrate that team. That team was probably a Final Four team. (But), you can’t hang that banner. You didn’t win anything.”

In 2019-20, Florida State went 26-5 under Leonard Hamilton, well before Loucks returned to Tallahassee to coach his alma mater. In four of their five losses, Florida State only lost by single digits, aside from an 80-64 loss to Indiana on December 3, 2019.

That season, Hamilton was a Naismith Coach of the Year award semifinals and Devin Vassell was a part of two awards lists. Vassell was a Julius Erving Award finalist and a Naismith Men’s Defensive PLayer of the Year watchlist member.

Hamilton did in fact win ACC Coach of the Year and Patrick Williams won ACC Sixth Man of the Year. Could that Florida State have won it all? Maybe. Unfortunately we’ll never know.

The top three teams were Kansas, Gonzaga and Dayton before everything was canceled. It’s unknown if there banners for those schools, but Florida State had one!

It’ll live on in the Chicago offices of Barstool so long as Big Cat is still working there. That came from his mouth on Wednesday’s edition of PMT. For Loucks, he’ll want to hang banners in the gym, but ones for legitimate tournament wins in the future.