Luke Loucks shares philosophy on scheduling

The Florida State Seminoles‘ new head coach Luke Loucks is excited to get out and compete next season. That’s had a massive impact on his personal scheduling philosophy where he wants to play the most challenging non-conference schedule possible.

At the ACC Spring Meetings, Loucks explained that philosophy. From his point of view, it comes from his NBA background and there is top-tier talent every night. On top of that, it allows you to measure yourself against the best teams in the country.

“First and foremost, everyone thought I was nuts,” Luke Loucks said. “Because I’m coming from the NBA where an off night, you’re still going against NBA all-stars. You take your foot off the gas at all, you’re going to lose. So, I’m familiar because I played [in college], but I’m not used to scheduling bad teams. I’m coming in, I want to play everyone and everyone was like, ‘Slow down big dog, we’ll get there.'”

Luke Loucks finished his playing career in 2016 and began coaching in the same season as an assistant with the Golden State Warriors. Most recently, he was with the Sacramento Kings and now he’s taking his first college job. With that, he is leaning on some people within the program who have more college experience and trying to blend the philosophies.

“The deal I made, [assistant coach] Michael Fly is helping us put the schedule together and all the coaches have influence,” Loucks said. “I said, ‘Give me a handful of big-time games that we can schedule.’ Fly has done an unbelievable job of making those connections. We have probable contracts, not signed, we’ll have three big-time neutral games, we’ll have one big-time game at home, one on the road. Obviously, the road one will be Florida and then the homes and neutrals, we’re still signing the contracts.”

Florida State is coming off a frustrating 17-15 season, missing the NCAA Tournament. Still, Loucks wants to take on the best teams from last year to measure where they’re at, rather than add those easier wins in the non-conference.

“To me, when you book those games, I want them to be top-10, top-15 opponents,” Loucks said. “Because it’s a way to measure yourself against the best. You can talk about wanting to improve the program and be the best and be competitive. You don’t know what that feels like until you play those teams. Right? The first thing I said is, ‘I want to play every Final Four team from last year.’ I don’t know if we’re gonna get that done, but, obviously, the Duke and Florida ones are on top of it. Those are the things that are — and maybe I’m just young and naive, but I want to play the best.”

This philosophy actually goes beyond Florida State and to the ACC as a whole. Scheduling harder non-conference games, and succeeding in them, can boost the resumes of teams throughout the conference. That will help more teams get into the NCAA Tournament after the ACC got just four teams into the NCAA Tournament last season.

“On the bottom side,” Loucks said. “And this is what a lot of the meetings were about today, how do we collectively as a conference get that NET up, so we can get more than four or five teams in the Tournament. I think the SEC has done a good job both financially with their resources, but also schedule-wise. They’ve done an incredible job lifting up the conference, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Florida State’s schedule for the 2025-26 season hasn’t yet been made public. This upcoming season, is going to feature an 18-game conference schedule, down from 20 games. That will allow for two extra non-conference games to get scheduled.