Florida State loses assistant R-Jay Barsh, hires Georgetown assistant Kevin Nickelberry

The Florida State basketball staff is set to get a shakeup, with one assistant coach departing and Leonard Hamilton already having his replacement lined up.

Florida State’s R-Jay Barsh is reportedly departing to take a job on Mark Few‘s Gonzaga staff. Hamilton will hire Georgetown assistant coach Kevin Nickelberry as his replacement, with the Seminoles confirming the move on their Twitter account.

Nickelberry has had head coaching stints at both Hampton and Howard. He also briefly served as LSU‘s interim head coach when Will Wade was fired.

Florida State is in desperate need of some fresh blood after having its worst season since 2004-05.

The Seminoles finished the 2022-23 campaign with just nine wins, going 9-23 overall and 7-13 in ACC play. It was only the third losing season in Hamilton’s 21 years with the program.

Kevin Nickelberry offers some solid coaching experience dating back to 1991.

Most recently he spent three seasons on LSU’s staff under Wade as an assistant coach.

He was the head coach at Howard for nine years before that, with the program struggling to win much during his tenure there. Howard finished at .500 or better only twice during his tenure, going 17-17 in 2018-19 and 16-16 in 2014-15.

Prior to that, Nickelberry spent three years as the head coach at Hampton, where he put together a more respectable 49-44 record.

In between those two head coaching gigs, Nickelberry spent one year as an assistant at DePaul in 2009-10.

Before his head coaching days, Nickelberry was an assistant coach at Clemson from 2003-06, at Charlotte from 2001-03, at Holy Cross from 199-01, at Monmouth from 1998-99 and at Howard from 1995-98.

Kevin Nickelberry coached with the Columbia Union prior to that. As a player, he played at Virginia Wesleyan from 1982-84.