Is FSU in rebuild mode?

After another disappointing loss - this time at home to Mercer - the 'fire Ham' crowd is beginning to stir. I'm not going to debate the stupidity of that nonsense, but I will say that fans have a right to be frustrated. The opening loss to South Alabama, though not hard to predict, combined with the very bad loss to Mercer are enough to have fans openly questioning Coach Hamilton and staff.

Why won't he shorten the rotations? Who is the team's center? Why are they allowing the post to become a black hole? Where is the sense of urgency to get wins at the expense of developing the role players?

And while all of those questions are valid, let's look past them and revisit the season's expectations.

During the season preview - as is typical - I predicted where FSU's offense and defense would finish for the season. And remember that here at Tomahawk Nation we disregard meaningless stats like points per game, as that does not account for tempo. Instead, we look at points per possession on both side of the ball.

In the season preview I predicted that FSU's offense would improve from No. 75 last year, to No. 50 (out of 347 Division I teams, and corrected for strength of opponent). The Seminoles offense is currently ranked No. 53. In the preview I predicted that FSU's defense would fall from No. 15 last year to No. 65 this year. The Seminoles defense is currently ranked 76th.

In other words, this team is pretty much exactly where I expected them to be. The difference comes down to a few possessions in the Mercer game, which resulted in an unforeseen loss.

So question the staff all you want. But if you think the team is wildly under performing then you should have called me out in the season preview for my predictions. No one did.