Joe Lunardi, ESPN's go-to guy on all things pertaining to the NCAA tournament, has released his preseason Bracketology projection for the 2015-2016 season, and after a two-year absence, he sees the Seminoles returning to the big dance.
Lunardi's projection has FSU making the tourney as a No. 9 seed and drawing a first-round match-up against No. 8 Purdue in Oklahoma City. And, evidently, he sees the ACC as the country's undisputed power conference next season, forecasting nine Atlantic Coast Conference teams to make the cut for March Madness-- the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, and PAC-12 are all projected to snag six bids.
According to Lunardi, No. 1 seed North Carolina and No. 2 seeds Duke and Virginia figure to be the class of the ACC. Only one other conference foe is in his tourney field as a lower seed than the 'Noles (Syracuse, seeded 11th), so we can reasonably infer that he's thinking Florida State will probably finish somewhere around the middle of the conference.