FSU basketball’s NCAA Tournament projections improve again

The Seminoles got off to the right start on Wednesday, taking care of Wake Forest to open their ACC schedule with a win. ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi responded to Florida State’s ninth straight win by bumping them up a line in his latest NCAA Tourney projection, along with (more importantly) predicting FSU to play a de facto home game at the West Region’s Orlando venue. Lunardi now has the ‘Noles as a 5-seed, matching up with 12-seed UNC Wilmington in the first round. The winner of that one would get the victor of 4-seed Xavier and 13-seed Valparaiso, also in the City Beautiful. Two games in O-Town could be a fast track to the Sweet 16 for FSU.

TeamRankings.com kept the Seminoles’ most likely seed as a 6, but they did raise Florida State’s chances of making the Big Dance from 75% to 82%, as well as increasing FSU’s Final Four chances from 3.1% to 3.8%, and the Seminoles’ national championship percentage from 0.4% to 0.5%.